






































7

PreFaCe For sPeCial issue oF Children’s Folklore review: 
mormon Children’s Folklore

tom mould

This special issue on the study of children’s folklore among Latter-day Saints 
signifies an important contribution to the study of Mormon folklore. It is from 
this perspective—Mormon folklore rather than children’s folklore—that I first 
approached these papers when I served as a discussant at the annual meeting 
of the American Folklore Society in New Orleans in 2012 when Brant Ellsworth, 
Spencer Green and Jared Rife first presented their work. It is with that same lens 
that I introduce their articles here. 

The study of Mormon folklore has been fairly consistent over time but 
inconsistent in its attention to certain topics, genres and groups. The supernatural 
has received more attention than the mundane, oral genres more than customary 
or material, and white U.S. westerners more than non-white, international or 
east of the Mississippi Mormons. In terms of the most commonly studied folklore 
genres, legends have dominated, with The Three Nephites and J. Golden Kimball 
serving as the poster children of LDS folklore. I use that cliché intentionally if 
ironically. Neither the Three Nephites nor J. Golden Kimball are ever depicted as 
children. And a survey of the verbal, material and customary lore of Latter-day 
Saints reveals a similar vacuum when it comes to children. 

To be fair, J. Golden Kimball could be accused of treating many of his fellow 
Saints as children in his frequent chastising, and occasionally, he unleashed 
his wrath on young as well as old, as when he was discussing the worth of 
an individual and turned his attention to his son: “Kimball said that he had a 
son—the finest son in the world—really a marvel—and that he wouldn’t take a 
million dollars for him. And, he added, he wouldn’t give ten cents for another like 
him” (Eliason 2007, 114). In fact, his critiques regularly treated youth and adult 
indistinguishably, as in the story Boyd K. Packer related in his book Teach Ye 
Diligently: “The story is told that someone stopped Elder J. Golden Kimball on the 
street on one occasion. There had been a little difficulty in Elder Kimball’s family 
that had become publicly known, and whoever it was who stopped him, no doubt 
with a mind to injure, said, ‘Brother Kimball, I understand you’re having some 
problems with one of your children.’ His answer was, ‘Yes, and the Lord is having 
some problems with some of his, too’” (1975, 287).

In this story, J. Golden Kimball suggests that the category of children is 
dynamic and contextually defined, a reminder that defining children, and 
children’s folklore is not as easy as it may first appear (Sutton-Smith 1999, 3). More 
obviously, but in some ways more interestingly, Kimball also references common 
imagery of mortals as God’s children, an image understood as literal rather than 
metaphoric in Mormonism. It is this constellation of beliefs in a pre-mortal life, a 
god of flesh and blood, and spirit children waiting to become mortal in order to 
achieve the status of gods themselves that has, perhaps not surprisingly, received 
significant scholarly attention from folklorists, providing grist for some of the few 



Preface Mould

8

studies of Mormon folklore that address children explicitly. Consider, for example, 
the study of spirit children narratives, stories that describe revelatory dreams about 
unborn children (see Brady 1987, Mitchell 2004, and Mould 2011, 268-79). All of 
these studies have examined the impact of the experience and the subsequent 
narratives on the adults involved. Importantly, these studies also address how 
children are viewed by both narrator and audience. Accordingly, we are afforded a 
glimpse of children through folklore, if not of the folklore of children. 

It is within this line of inquiry—children as a topic in folklore rather than 
children as producers, consumers and performers of folklore—that Spencer 
Green situates his study of the Wise Child in the LDS church discourse. Green’s 
work goes one step further towards traditional folklore analysis, however, by 
considering children not only as a concept within LDS theology, personal belief 
and public performance, but also as a specific motif found in folk traditions 
around the globe. How, Green asks, might our understanding of the widespread 
motif of the Wise Child (J120) as it appears in official Mormon discourse inform 
our understanding of Mormon worldview? His answer sheds light on how children 
are viewed and used in religious discourse in ways that highlight paradoxes in 
church hierarchies.

Where Green follows LDS scholarship conventions but diverges from those of 
most children’s folklore scholarship, Rife and Ellsworth do the reverse, bringing 
long overdue attention to younger members of the LDS faith by examining the 
folk traditions and performances of children. The lack of attention to the folklore 
of children is ironic since theologically, doctrinally and ideologically, children are 
such a central part of LDS religion and culture. Further, children are incorporated 
into church services and service at a very early age. Many young children bear 
their testimonies during Fast and Testimony meetings long before the still young 
age of eight, the “age of awareness” among Latter-day Saints when children 
are assumed to be mature and competent enough to make at least one choice 
of their own free will: the choice to be baptized. Not all children born into the 
covenant—that is, born of Mormon parents whose marriage has been sealed at 
the temple and raised in the church—make this choice at age eight, but many 
do. By age twelve, young men are typically ordained into the Aaronic priesthood 
and help serve the sacrament, and by eighteen, into the Melchizedek priesthood, 
having the full powers and duties of adult men in the church conferred upon 
them. Young women cannot hold the priesthood, but they move through the ranks 
of young women’s organizations until at eighteen, they too join the ranks of full 
adult members of the church by becoming members of the Relief Society. In other 
words, young people in the LDS church are granted responsibility and authority 
from a fairly young age. Yet despite what may seem an accelerated trajectory into 
adulthood, as Rife and Ellsworth show, LDS children find ample time to play, both 
outside and inside church meetings. 

Jared Rife takes us into Sacrament meeting—usually the first hour of a three hour 
block Sunday mornings that comprises the formal church service—to explore both 
how adults devise activities for children to keep them entertained, and how children 
devise their own play to stave off boredom. In his survey of these games, Rife 
examines the range of types, origins and functions of games played by toddlers to 



Mould  Preface

9

teens. While his focus is on how these games function, his work opens up fruitful 
avenues for analysis in structural taxonomies of LDS games, theological cultural 
constructs of play within the LDS church, gender differences, and shifting social 
norms of sanctioned and unsanctioned behaviors within formal church spaces. 

Brant Ellsworth, on the other hand, takes us outside these formal church 
spaces and into the homes of LDS children to consider how “playing the piano” 
differs from “piano play.” While Green and Rife provide glimpses into LDS culture 
through children’s folklore, Ellsworth provides glimpses of children’s culture 
through LDS folklore. Ellsworth notes that while his participants were all Mormon, 
the performances and patterns he observed are likely indicative of children in 
the U.S. more generally. That said, he does wonder whether the role of the piano 
in LDS church services both domestically and internationally impacts piano play 
among LDS children differently, if perhaps only in scope, than non-LDS children 
where the piano may not have as clear and widely shared symbolic meaning.

While these articles are not the first to examine the performances and folklore 
of children in the LDS Church—Elaine Lawless for example takes a brief look at 
how children’s testimonies compare to adult ones in order to highlight the well-
worn patterns recognized and performed by even the youngest members of the 
church (1984)—they are some of the first to do as their focus. Further, many of the 
themes and topics engaged within these studies of folklore of and by LDS children 
can be read into larger bodies of LDS scholarship. Spencer Green’s work should 
be read within the deep and rich body of scholarship of LDS oral narrative and 
discourse by authors such as Margaret Brady (1987), Eric Eliason (1999), Carolyn 
Gilkey (1979, 1994), Tom Mould (2011) and George Schoemaker (1989). Jared 
Rife’s work on games and play can at least partially be understood in the context 
of LDS humor by authors such as Jan Harold Brunvand (1970), Ed Geary (1999), 
Steve Siporin (2009) and William Wilson (1982 and 1985), as well as in the context 
of the creative dating invitations of young men and women as studied by Kristi 
Young (2005). And Brant Ellsworth’s study of piano play, while most obviously 
relevant to children’s folklore scholarship rather than LDS scholarship, can 
nonetheless be understood as part of a deep musical tradition within LDS culture, 
righted noted by Ellsworth when he argues that “From their earliest existence, 
Mormons have been a musical people.” Folklorists of LDS musical traditions have 
focused primarily on song and ballad—Thomas Cheney (1968), Austin and Alta 
Fife (1947), Austin Fife (1953), Gustive Larson (1971), Jill Terry Rudy (2013), Barre 
Toelken (1959); one can only hope that the attention Ellsworth pays to the music, 
not just the lyrics, will encourage other folklorists and ethnomusicologists to do 
the same. With the publication of this special issue, the same can be hoped for the 
study of LDS children’s folklore more generally. 

WORKS CITED

Brady, Margaret K. 1987. Transformations of Power: Women’s Visionary Narratives. 
Journal of American Folklore 100(398): 461-8.

Brunvand, Jan. 1970. As the Saints Go Marching By: Modern Jokelore Concerning 
Mormons.” Journal of American Folklore 83:53–60. 



Preface Mould

10

Cheney, Thomas Edward. 1968. Mormon Songs from the Rocky Mountains: A 
Compilation of Mormon Folksong. Austin: Publications for the American 
Folklore Society by University of Texas Press.

Eliason, Eric A. 1999. Toward the Folkloristic Study of Latter-Day Saint Conversion 
Narratives. BYU Studies 38(1):137–50.

 2007. The J. Golden Kimball Stories. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Fife, Austin E. 1953. A Ballad of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Western Folklore 

12:229–41. 
Fife, Austin, and Alta S. Fife. 1947. Folk Songs of Mormon Inspiration.” Western 

Folklore 6:42–52.
Geary, Edward A. 1999. Sanpete County Humor: The Tales and the Tellers. AML 

Annual 1999: Papers from the Annual Meeting 28 February, 1998, 12:101-
11. Edited by Lavina Fielding Anderson. Salt Lake City: Association for 
Mormon Letters. 

Gilkey, Carolyn Flatley. 1979. Mormon Testimony Meeting: Some Aspects of a 
Narrating Event.” Southwest Folklore 3(4):45–59.

  1994. Verbal Performance in Mormon Worship Services. PhD diss., 
University of Pennsylvania.

Larson, Gustive O. 1971. Orrin Porter Rockwell — The Modern Samson. In Lore of 
Faith and Folly, ed. Thomas E. Cheney, 179–90. Salt Lake City: University of 
Utah Press.

Lawless, Elaine J. 1984. “I Know If I Don’t Bear My Testimony, I’ll Lose It”: Why 
Mormon Women Bother to Speak at All. Kentucky Folklore Record 30:79-96.

Mitchell, Scott. 2004. “You Have No Right to Do Such a Thing”: An Insider Study of 
Entitlement of Spirit Child Narratives in Mormon Communities. M.A. thesis, 
English, University of Missouri, Columbia.

Mould, Tom. 2011. Still, the Small Voice: Narrative, Personal Revelation, and the 
Mormon Folk Tradition. Logan: Utah State University Press.

Packer, Boyd K. 1975. Teach Ye Diligently. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company.
Rudy, Jill Terry. 2013. Portraits in Song: Gleanings from the Brigham Young Folk 

Song Cycle. In Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies, ed. Eric Eliason 
and Tom Mould, 337-48. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.

Schoemaker, George H. 1989. Made in Heaven: Marriage Confirmation Narratives 
among Mormons. Northwest Folklore 7: 38–53.

Siporin, Steve. 2009. For Time and Eternity: BYU Coed Jokes and the Complexity 
of Mormon Humor. In Folklore in a Changing World, ed. Jawaharlal Handoo 
and Reimund Dvideland, 209–27. Mysore, India: Zooni Publications.

Sutton-Smith, Brian. 1999. Children’s Folklore: A Source Book. Logan: Utah State 
University Press.

Toelken, J. Barre. 1959. The Ballad of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Western 
Folklore 18:169–72.

William A. Wilson. 1982. On Being Human: The Folklore of Mormon Missionaries. 
New York Folklore 8(3–4):5–27.

 1985. The Seriousness of Mormon Humor. Sunstone 10: 6–13.
Young, Kristi W. 2005. “Now that I’ve Kissed the Ground You Walk On”: A Look at 

Gender in Creative Date Invitations. Marriage & Families (Winter): 10–17.




