OCR Document


 

CONTENTS 

From the Editor........................................................... 4 

Newell Prize: 1991 

"Adolescent Legend Trips as Teenage Cultural 
Response: A Study of Lore in Context" 

Patricia M. Meley................................................. 5 

International Perspectives 

"Strategy in Counting-Out: Evidence From  
Saint-Nazaire, France" 
 Andy Arleo ............................................................. 25 

"The Concept 'Toy' and Cultural Research" 
 Bo Lonnqvist ........................................................... 31 

CFS Invited Essay 

"Books for Children" 
 Edith Fowke ........................................................... 39 

Notes and Announcements ................................ 43 

Directory of Members ........................................ 45 

Cover: This issue's cover is a photograph of a painting by 
Madeleine Carpentier entitZed "Les Chandelles." 

1 



 

Life Achievement  Award 

 

R.s.v.p. 
(202) 707-1616 

2 

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20540 

The American Folklife Center and 
the Children's Folklore Section of 

the American Folklore Society 
cordially invite you to a coffee 

honoring 

Iona Opie 

Recipient of the  
Children's Folklore Section's 

Life Achievement A ward 

Friday, April 19, 1991  
9 - 10:30 a.m. 
Montpelier Room 

James Madison Building 
The Library of Congress 



 

 

Life Achievement Award 

Left to Right: C. W. Sullivan III, CFR Editor; Iona Opie; 
Priscilla Ord, CFS Immediate Past President; Alan Jabbour, 
Director of the American Folklife Center 

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FROM THE EDITOR. . . 
The highlight of the spring for me was traveling to 
Washington, DC, and, with CFS Immediate Past President 
Priscilla Ord, presenting the Children's Folklore Section's 
Lifetime Achievement Award to Iona Opie at the American 
Folklife Center and, that evening, hearing her deliver the 
Arbuthnot Lecture. The face of the medal awarded to Ms. 
Opie was on the cover of the last CFR (13.2); a copy of the 
invitation to the award ceremony and a picture of us all 
there are included in this volume. 

The lead article in this issue is Patricia M. Meley's 
"Adolescent Legend Trips as Teenage Cultural Response: 
A Study of Lore in Context," the 1991 Newell Prize Paper. 
Meley is a student of Simon Bronner's. In addition, this 
issue features articles from CFS members in countries other 
than the US. Bo Lonnqvist's "The Concept of 'Toy' and 
Cultural Research" is the final paper from the 1989 CFS 
panel at Philadelphia (see 13.1 and 13.2 for the other 
papers). Lonnqvist is a Senior Research Associate for the 
State Commission for Humanistic Research at the 
Academy of Finland. Andy Arleo's "Strategy in Counting-
Out Evidence from Saint-Nazaire, France" continues 
fieldwork begun for his 1982 doctoral dissertation. Arleo is 
a folklorist at the Institut Universitaire de Technologie de 
Saint-Nazaire and Centre d'Etudes Metriques, Universite de 
Nantes. The third article, "Books for Children" by Edith 
Fowke, is the first CFS invited essay. At the 1990 CFS 
meeting, the Executive Board and the members present 
suggested that Canadian folklore scholarship, and 
especially that of Edith Fowke, needed to be more widely 
recognized and asked her to review pertinent books (see 
13.2 for her review of Cosbey' s All in T ol!ether Girls) and 
to write an essay about her own work. 

Desktop publishing continues to have advantages. The 
photograph in this issue is more affordable than it would 
have been in a type-set publication. There are some 
inconveniences with desktop publishing, however. Editors 
who once blamed the printer for errors now must deliver 
perfect camera-ready copy or take the blame themselves. In 
the last issue, Armand Szainer's name was misspelled. His 
design for and work on the CFS Lifetime Achievement 
Medal were, in a large part, donated to us; and I apologize 
for the error. 

C. W. Sullivan III 
4 



 

Adolescent Legend Trips as Teenage Cultural 
Response: A Study of Lore in Context 
Patricia M. Meley 

One warm evening in June 1989, Jason, a fifteen-year-old boy 
who lived next door, called through my open window, "Can I 
come in and smoke a cigarette?" I welcomed him in, and as 
he sprawled his six-foot frame across the couch, he began to 
earnestly relate an account of a "trip" he had taken. To hear 
him tell it, it was a journey that took him far in emotion if not 
in distance: 

We went, you know, because Duane told us about it. 
There's this trailer where this guy shot his wife--shot her 
dead, y' know--she's gone-dead. And we stopped at this 
trailer and sat there and stared at it and we were all scared 
shitless. 'Cause it's just this narrow dirt road; trees 
surround it. And we sat there and this blue light goes on in 
this abandoned trailer where this man killed his wife. And 
if we didn't get out of there like nothing--I mean, we were 
gone. And then this car, it's a one-way road, there's no way 
to get out on it, this car just turned out of nowhere. There's 
a cliff--you fall off, you die--turned out of nowhere, just 
nowhere. I will never go back. I was so scared, I didn't 
sleep. 

About two weeks later, while he was sitting outside waiting 
for a friend, Jason's seventeen-year-old brother, Paul, told me 
a brief, but equally strange tale: 

There's a crazy man back there. He catches you--he hangs 
you upside down and cuts your balls off. There's a light 
that comes on and if you stare at it, you will be blind. 
Yeah, we go back there. We walked it--me and a bunch of 
my friends. 

The teenagers who related these accounts to me are not 
juvenile delinquents; they are not drug addicts or mentally 
disturbed. They are healthy adolescents, and the activity that 
they describe, the legend trip, takes place near their hometown 
of Columbia, Pennsylvania. It also happens in sites all over 
America. 

Legend trip research is a relatively new field of inquiry in 
folklore. The attention of earlier collectors centered on the 
textual analysis of adolescent legends. Recent trends in 

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Meley 

contextual analysis have refocused the research on the performance of the 
legend.  Legend trip research has focused rather exclusively on the trip's 
function in the coming-of-age process of white, suburban, middle-class 
adolescents. Yet there are indications that the legend trip is an urban 
phenomenon as well, and as my own study shows, the trip is a multi-racial 
experience.1 

Kenneth A. Thigpen, Jr.' s, "Adolescent Legends in Brown County: A 
Survey," published in 1971, is an early study of adolescent legends that 
comments on the link between the narrative legend and its performance--the 
legend trip. Central to the ritual performance in Thigpen's opinion is 
the trip's three part structure: the introduction, the enactment at the scene of the 
phenomenon, and the retrospective memorate. The introduction takes place 
before arrival at the legend trip site and "includes relating the past event and 
describing the current phenomenon" (204). The story is told by 
an experienced legend-tripper "in a manner that will heighten the anticipation of 
uninitiated and initiated alike, thus enhancing the receptive psychological state 
of all involved" (205). 

The second part, the ritual enactment at the scene, is considered by 
Thigpen the "crucial" aspect of the trip. During this phase, teenagers "attempt to 
merge the supernatural realm described in the first part with reality" (205). The 
third and final aspect involves the telling and retelling 
of the event that the participants have experienced. These stories may in turn 
"be added to the basic legend complex to be told as the first part of the 
performance" (205). Thigpen concludes that the legend trip's primary function is 
the introduction of the "uninitiated to the realm of the supernatural" (204). 

Gary Hall coined the term "legend trip" in his study, "The Big Tunnel." 
Hall concentrates his discussion on the legend-telling aspect of the trip. The 
telling sets the scene for the trip. Hall concludes that the legend trip's function is 
"primarily recreational" and sees the "willing suspension of disbelief' as a 
crucial element of the trip's success (256). Similarly, 
William M. Clements' investigation of another Indiana legend trip in "The Chain 
on the Tombstone" concludes that the trips "provide a supernatural thrill as an 
escape from boredom" (264). 

An extensive survey is Bill Ellis' "Legend-Tripping in Ohio: A Behavioral 
Study." Ellis proposes that adolescent legend trips are in part a "ritual of 
rebellion" in which the participants escape the reality-based, moralistic, and 
authoritarian world of parents, school, and police (64). Legend trip sites are 
often physically remote, and the trips Ellis surveyed are opportunities for illegal 
activities like under-age drinking, taking drugs, vandalism, and illicit sexual 
behavior. The presence of these activities reinforces his thesis that the trips 
function as "deliberate escapes into altered states where conventional rules do 
not operate" (65). In addition, Ellis 

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Adolescent Legend Trips 

examines the trips as a way for teens to confront adolescent anxieties of 
mortality in psychologically safe ways. He concludes that the “trip. . . is from 
start to finish a way of 'giving the finger' to adult rationality;” (69). 

My study contributes to adolescent legend trip research because I 
worked with a single peer group over a six-month period; as a result, my 
fieldwork is an in-depth study of a normally closed folk group. I attempt to 
place my informants' experiences against the larger backdrop of legend trip 
scholarship in order to draw comparisons and identify characteristics of a 
ritualized adolescent activity. By concentrating on the context of this ritual 
and by focusing on the folk group and its use of culture, I have been able to 
interpret the trips with a sense of the subtleties and complexities the study of 
adolescence demands. 

I conducted my fieldwork in my hometown of Columbia, a small, 
working-class town located in south central Pennsylvania. Columbia's 
position on the Susquehanna River made it a natural gateway to the west, and 
early in the eighteenth century, a trio of English Quakers established a ferry 
there. Known as "Wright's Ferry," the settlement grew in prominence and 
was formally founded as the borough of Columbia in 1788. Reaching its 
zenith in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Columbia was a 
bustling center of river and railroad transportation, and home to many 
industries, including foundries, rolling mills, and lace mills.2 

Colombia has, throughout its history, stood in marked contrast to its 
neighboring towns. In a region best known for its German Mennonite and 
Amish groups, Columbia's 10,000 residents are largely of German Catholic 
and Scots-Irish ancestry. A Democratic bastion in conservative, Republican 
Lancaster County, the industrial town lies among many agricultural 
communities. 

Today, like many other small towns in America, Columbia must combat 
the stagnation brought on by unemployment, population decline, and lack of 
morale. Although Columbia has been in slow decline over the past few 
decades, many older residents show a fierce pride and are quick to point out 
the town's advantages. Colombians still sit "out front" on stoops and porches 
where they greet their neighbors by name, and the borough remains a 
relatively safe and appealing town in which to raise children. Children still 
gather to play in neighborhood groups, and the town is virtually surrounded 
by the natural playgrounds provided by wooded lots, and the banks of 
streams and the Susquehanna River. For adolescents, however, the 
community offers little entertainment and with many familiar, watchful eyes 
upon them, the town can seem repressive. 

Teenagers in Columbia complain of the lack of places to congregate and 
of the absence of youth-oriented activities. Those that do exist are predictable 
or typically adult-run. During the winter months, social events tend to 
revolve around the school calendar and are most often limited to 

7 



 

Meley 

weekends. High school sporting events are well-attended, and occasional 
school dances help break the monotony. Teens go to one another's homes 
(especially if parents are away or working) to watch MTV, play video games, 
and party--drink beer and occasionally smoke marijuana. Columbia has two 
video arcades where teenagers gather, "but you have to spend money or they 
throw you out." "Going to the mall" (Park City Mall in Lancaster) is a 
favorite cold weather pastime, but one that requires cash, typically in short 
supply among Columbia's teens. 

In warm weather, Columbia adolescents are out of doors as much as 
possible, away from adult eyes and interference. A local pizza parlor serves 

as a meeting-place, and the town's centrally located park is a favorite 
hangout. Up and down Columbia's "main drag," Locust Street, teenagers 
gather in small groups, though the local police's efforts to crack down on 
loitering and cruising has put a damper on the crowds. In the summer, the 
town boasts a drive-in theater which specializes in horror and adventure 
movies and is popular as a party spot rather than a "passion pit." "Car 
parties," when teenagers drive to isolated country roads to drink, remain 
popular, as does cruising. It is during the summer months that legend trip 
activity is at a peak. 

It has been this way since at least 1965, the earliest date that I have been 
able to trace legend trip activity. Although older Columbians related stories 
of cruising and other automotive activities, it appears that the legend trip is, 
in Columbia, a post-1950s teenage pastime. 

I interviewed forty-one teenagers from July 1989 to January 1990. My 
informants composed a loosely affiliated peer group, racially and sexually 
mixed. The teens ranged in age from thirteen to nineteen; all were raised in 
Columbia and attended Columbia High School. Some were honor students, 
active in school activities such as sports and band; others were in trouble 
with parents, teachers, and the law. Most of the teenagers were of German 
ancestry, but I also talked with Black and Hispanic teens. The majority of the 
teenagers were from lower-income families though at least two had 
professional parents. I was at first surprised at the diversity within the group; 
but in a school with a class size average of under eighty, everyone knows 
everyone else, and though cliques do exist, their boundaries are often blurred. 

My first interview occurred at Marisa's Sweet Sixteen birthday party, 
held in her backyard in July, 1989. Subsequent interviews took place in my 
home under a variety of circumstances: sometimes a lone teen, sometimes a 
group of twenty or more. Often these interviews were spontaneous, for in the 
course of my research, my informants came to look upon me as a "big sister." 
That, coupled with the fact that winter arrived and my apartment was warm 
and dry, gave me a unique opportunity to get to know the teenagers well. 
Although my original encounters with the teenagers were 

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Adolescent Legend Trips 

focused on legend trips, the interviews were characteristically informal, and 
we quickly expanded the relationship to include discussions about school, 
teachers they hated, relationships with parents, and their current love 
interests. When a large group showed up, the quality of my research suffered, 
and the meeting would quickly deteriorate from an impromptu "bull session" 
to a loud, unmanageable gathering. 

I interviewed informants on many occasions under more advantageous 
conditions. They included Jason, a fifteen-year-old boy who was ambivalent 
about school and had a strained relationship with his parents. Jason's ultimate 
goal was to "get the hell out of this town." Paul, Jason's seventeen year-old 
half-brother, was a more dedicated student and was involved in high school 
activities, like the football team. Paul was shyer than his exuberant younger 
brother, blushed easily, and often drove during the legend trips that the teens 
told me about. I had known both boys since they were toddlers, and for the 
last three years, they had been my neighbors. It was through Jason and Paul 
that I gained access to the peer group. The brothers served as a bridge 
between the various elements in the large peer group; Jason's friends were the 
wild bunch, while Paul's were more likely to maintain the status quo. La was 
a sixteen-year-old Black girl, soft-spoken and mature. La was always matter-
of-fact in tone, even when she told me outrageous stories. She recently began 
vocational training in horticulture and was pleased that she only had to attend 
Columbia High for half-days. 

I chose to concentrate on two of the five legend trips sites my informants 
described. Known as "The Wall" and "Haug's Road," the two spots were 
cited by virtually all informants as the most popular and will be discussed in 
detail. The minor sites surveyed included "Toad Road" in York County, 
Pennsylvania. The site was identified by only three seventeen-year-old males 
who told me that they had gone there with "a bunch of older guys one night." 
According to several young men from Columbia, the site was an especially 
popular one in the early 1980s, but has apparently passed out of vogue. The 
"Gates of Hell" are located on the road; teenagers foolish enough to enter the 
gates are never seen or heard from again. 

The other two legend trips identified by my informants are complex and 
deserve separate discussion. They are both "harassment trips," a type that 
Ellis describes as a trip where the object is to torment or abuse an elderly, 
eccentric, or handicapped individual. The "Midget House" was such a site. 
Only about fifteen of the teenagers told me that they had been there; four of 
the girls who went insisted that they only accompanied their boyfriends and 
did not "get out of the car and knock on the windows." One sixteen-year-old 
male told me that his friend had "run over one [a midget] in a cornfield one 
night," but most of the teenagers told me they thought this type of trip was 
"stupid." Jason asked, "Why would I want to bother them? 

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Meley 

They never did anything to me." 
Another harassment trip site was at the house of "The Troll," described 

as a "nut who will shoot you if you beep and holler." The site was known to 
virtually all of my informants because of the notoriety of an incident that 
occurred there in December of 1988 when Ralph Longenecker, "The Troll," 
shot at a carload of teens and injured one boy. Longenecker's story of years of 
harassment made the national press, and he was later acquitted of any 
wrongdoing. 

"The Wall" is an early nineteenth-century graveyard on a lonely road on 
the outskirts of Marietta, Pennsylvania, another small town in Lancaster 
County, located about twenty minutes away from downtown Columbia. The 
cemetery is small, measuring about fifty feet by thirty-five feet, and is 
enclosed completely by a three foot high wall. A stone plaque on the wall 
reads, "Within this God's acre rest the descendants of Hans Graft."3 
Columbia teenagers contend that the cemetery is guarded by Indian ghosts 
who reside in the surrounding woods and cornfields. On nights with a full 
moon, or on any night at midnight (depending on the version), teenagers 
describe a ritual said to be performed at the site: "You walk around the wall 
seven times and spit, and you will die." Other versions vary the ritual: some 
say you must walk the wall thirteen times, some eliminate the spitting, and 
some say that death is not immediate, but comes in the future without 
warning. 

The ritual of circumambulation, though important to the site, does not 
have to be performed in order to make the trip successfully scary. In fact, not 
one informant admitted to completing the trek; most vehemently stated that 
they never even tried. Phil, fifteen, told me that he had heard of "a guy and 
some girl who walked it, and they disappeared; nobody ever found out what 
happened to them." Some of the more adventurous teenagers reported acts of 
vandalism; tombstones were overturned and tossed around. Most of the 
adolescents, however, are content to simply drive to the site, and they report 
strange sights and sounds. 

The wind is held responsible for many scary experiences; on an 
otherwise calm night, the legend trip site is described as being unnaturally 
windy. For instance, one teenager reported that "a gust of wind nearly pushed 
the car off the road." Others claim to have had unexplainable car trouble and 
report that the car stalled repeatedly though "nothing was wrong with the 
engine, 'cause we checked." A group of teenagers referred to "the night we 
saw the gas cans," but when pressed for details, they could not tell me why 
the gas cans frightened them. 

La's account of a legend trip to The Wall describes her first experience 
with legend-tripping: 

I went about two years ago, me, R.J., and Mike. We weren't scared or 

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Adolescent Legend Trips 

nothing. You know, we just wanted to go over there and see what was 
goin' on--see if it was scary or whatever. So we went over and as soon as 
we got to the road that it was on this big gush of wind pushed the car 
back--it was scary. We were really scared. We weren't even there yet. 
We didn't know where it was so . . . we seen it and, urn, we just like 
looked at it for a while and this wind was pushin' the car and stuff. "I 
don't know if you want to get out of the car" [they said] and this one guy 
got out of the car--R. J. got out. And he, you know, looked over it and 
stuff, you know, and, you know, he was scared. And they're like, "Walk 
around it seven times." He never did. We just--the car stalled right in 
front of it--it was wild. 

La's trip to The Wall was typical in many ways. Like many teens, she 
describes the unnatural wind and unexplainable car trouble, which, she told 
me later, continued to plague them until they were back in Columbia. None 
of the participants attempted to walk on the wall, although all three were 
aware of the existence of the ritual. The trip was typical, too, in that it 
included both male and female teenagers, though the group of three was 
relatively small. 

Larger trips to The Wall were more common, like the one related to me 
by Paul, seventeen, and his eighteen-year-old friend: 

B: Yeah, we go over there all the time. The last time was great.  It was 
 Paul and Phil and Helen. . . we had a whole carload of people. 
P: Was that the time we thought we saw the gas can people? I was 

driving, yeah. And we pulled in real close to the Wall. And, uh- 
B: Tara was there, too, 'cause she got out.  
P: Oh, we were in the "Big Boat," weren't we? We had about ten 

people in there. Everybody was carrying on and shit. Did I get out 
that time? They paid me money to go 'cause I needed the gas 

 money. It was after a football game. I was driving my dad's car. 
B: The car was slidin'. And you kept puttin' that back thing down. P: 
Yeah, the back window, and I got real close. And the girls were all 

screaming. I picked a tombstone up. We were driving away, and I 
 like, I don't know, but you- 
B: We saw those gas cans- 
P: I don't know why we got scared, but the girls were sure screamin'. 

It was cool. 

Like most of the trips related to me by older teens, Paul and his buddy 
stressed the social aspects of the trip. The gang had piled into his father's 
station wagon after the Friday night football game, and Paul described it for 
me as a celebratory occasion, with "everybody carrying on." Larger trips 

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Meley 

taken by older teenagers are related in an upbeat, joking tone. The teenagers 
are less serious in tone about the supernatural phenomenon and less emphatic 
about the details of the trip-who was there, what was seen, and how they 
were scared. 

"Haug's Road" is the second trip surveyed, and it has a more complex 
legend cycle, with significant discrepancies among stories collected. The 
winding, partially paved road in York County, Pennsylvania, was for years 
the site of a harassment trip. Haug's Road was home to "an albino hermit who 
lived in a shack"; the site was popular among Columbia teens at least as far 
back as 1971.4   As a teenager, I vividly remember trips to Haug's Road. My 
first legend trip was in the summer of 1977, when I was fifteen years old. 
Four friends and I rode in the back of my brother's pick-up truck. After our 
initiation to the site, we returned many times, and though we never laid eyes 
on the hermit, our greatest fear (and the reason we went) was that he would 
shoot at us. The hermit died soon after I graduated from high school in 1979, 
and I assumed the lure of the site was buried with him. Yet teenagers report a 
variety of uncanny activity on the road: mysterious blue lights; houses that 
move and disappear; half-cat, half-fox animals with glowing eyes that run in 
front of moving cars and disappear over the road's steep sides. They also 
offer differing reasons for the road's haunted nature. Some teens claim that a 
"crazy man" lives on the road; some allude to the hermit, or his ghost; some 
maintain that the road was the site of a murder and attribute the haunted 
happenings to the victim's ghost or to the murderer (usually identified as a 
husband). 

A fifteen-year-old female informant related to me the following account 
of a trip to Haug's Road: 

A friend and a couple of other friends went--Stan, Michelle, Tara, 
Courtney, me, and Mike. Stan drove. They were all there before. It was a 
Friday night last summer. We were just driving around town and Stan 
said, "Let's go over to Haug's Road." I said, "Where's that at?" He said, 
"Just come on. We'll all go there." I said, "all right" and all these people 
were in the car. And we're just on this dirt road. And it's all bumpy and 
we were driving on this bumpy road--real bumpy--and then we came 
upon this house. And there were no lights on and he [Stan] stopped the 
car and turned out his lights. And all of a sudden this light came on in 
this house and we tried to start the car and his car wouldn't start up. And 
we were all screamin' and shakin' the car. And then, urn, and then. . . 
Stan said, "Look, what's that comin' out from the trees, walkin' down?" I 
said, "What is it?" We were all screamin'--we were so scared. And then 
we finally got the car started and we moved on. Then we came upon this 
like, little shack. And then he [Stan] said, "Get out and go see what's in 
there." And we said, "No, 

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Adolescent Legend Trips 

we ain't getting out." And I think that they already knew what was 
goin' on but I didn't. He said, "Go ahead, go ahead," and I said, "No, 
someone go with me," 'cause they were all pushin' me to go. I said, "I 
don't want to go." And so I got out of the car and like there was this door 
and I heard this creepin' noise. I run back in the--I tried to get back in the 
car and they had the doors locked. I was sittin' there banging on the 
doors and it was so scary. And then we made a U-turn and we came 
back. And we kept hearin' these noises outside the car and then he [Stan] 
got out. Someone musta been pretendin' like there was a flat tire and he 
got out and there was no flat tire. And he said, "Come on out here and 
look at this. Come on out here and look at this." We went out and he 
took off--left us standin' there for like ten minutes--me, Michelle, 
Courtney, and Tara. And we were by that house. So we start walking 
down the road and, uh, we saw this light flashin', but it was him in the 
car and he kept scaring us and we started runnin' down the road. And, 
uh, he was waiting like at the beginning where we were at. We were 
cursing him out and screamin' at him. On the way home we were talking 
about it and they were laughin' at us. I haven't been back since. 

In this narrative, the informant tells her story in a standard form, with a clear 
beginning, middle, and end. It is a story that she has told before, and one that 
she will repeat. Typical among my female informants, this teenager paid 
particular attention to detail, especially in noting who was there and the 
reactions of all participants. 

The informant makes note of her status as an initiate: "... they already 
knew what was goin' on but I didn't." Because she was new to the trip, she 
was tricked by the group into performing a special task. Similarly, the boys, 
who were much older, "pranked" the girls by stranding them there. 

Once initiated, teenagers take subsequent trips, and though they now 
know what to expect, the fun, and the scare, are in no way diminished. 
Describing what he later told me was "about my twentieth" trip, a sixteen-
year-old boy included an account of what happened once the group returned 
to town: 

Oh yeah, sure, we go over there all the time. We went about a month 
ago-right after school started. It was me and RJ. and Marisa and Julie. I 
drove Marisa's car. It was a Friday night and there was nothing going on 
so he says, somebody says, "Hey, let's go over to Haug's Road." And we 
went and everybody kept saying that whoever was in that trailer shot his 
wife and killed her. And this, this really freaked me out. We drove back 
there, you know, to Haug's Road, and all the 

13 



 

Meley 

windows fogged up. This is a dirt road in the middle of-like it hadn't 
rained for a week. We came out with mud allover the car and the 
windows steamed up. There was no mud on that road 'cause it hadn't 
rained for a week The car was muddy-it was full of mud. Right up the 
road there's a barn and this blue light came on. Well, we got out of there 
quick. So we got back to town and go to the pizza place and saw this, 
uh, this group of people we know. And like we start telling them about 
what happened, you know, with the mud and all. And they could see it. 
So they said that they were gonna go and check it out. 
Despite the divergent tales that sun-ound the sites, teenagers are in 

agreement when describing the performance of the trips. Indeed, legend trips 
to both sites share many of the same features. That the physical trips are 
consistent and exhibit a pattern of behavior is significant, for the trip itself 
appears to have functions independent of the legends and may well be the 
more important aspect in uncovering adolescent motives and behavior. 

The trips are described as either spontaneous or planned. A spontaneous 
legend trip usually occurs on a weekend night when "nothing else is 
happening." A group of teenagers, bored with cruising around town, suddenly 
decide to drive in the countryside, and someone suggests a trip. More 
commonly, however, legend trips are planned. Teenagers who have been to 
the sites will often plan to take an initiate to the site: "They heard I never was 
there," one informant told me, "so they took me." Occasionally a group will 
go to the site without an initiated teen: "We heard about it in school, so we 
went to look for it." 

According to my informants, the mood inside the car as the trip begins is 
often rowdy and excited. The kids laugh and joke and talk about general 
topics: school, families, and members of the opposite sex. Once outside the 
town limits, however, the mood grows more serious. The topic of conversa-
tion switches to the approaching site, what happened there, what they saw the 
last time, what they heard happened to someone else. "If I was taking 
someone who's never been there," Jason explained, "I'd bullshit it up. You 
know, I'd tell them what had happened, but I'd drag it out and shit." By the 
time the car has reached the site, the teenagers are engrossed with the 
situation. They are quiet, tense, apprehensive. 

Both legend trip sites have a central focus. The cemetery itself is the 
obvious place to stop in the first trip, and the old blue trailer on Haug's Road 
is reported as the focus in the second. The event itself may vary, depending 
on the audacity of the driver and the passengers. Some teens report getting 
out of the car, blowing the horn, even performing a Chinese Fire Drill to taunt 
the Fates. Some teens are more timid, and sit passively in the car. 

When asked if he got out of the car at the Wall, a fifteen-year old boy 

14 



 

Adolescent Legend Trips 

told me, "No way! I wouldn't even look out the window. I was buried deep 
in someone." The central focus of the legend trip, the event at the site, is also 
the basis of most of the teenagers' narratives. They include many details of 
what happened at this central point, and they appear to vividly remember 
events, even if they occurred two to three years ago. 

Leave-taking is usually abrupt and is markedly uncontrolled. Something 
happens, someone sees or hears something, and kids jump into the car, bury 
their faces, scream, and speed away. The frenzy inside the car generally lasts 
until the teenagers are back on the main highway; everyone talks at once, in 
bits and pieces of, "Oh my god" and "Did you see?" As the teenagers calm, 
they begin to reconstruct the trip among themselves. They talk about what 
happened, and who saw what. Sometimes, a teenager will attempt to 
rationalize a scary event, but most of the teenagers remain shaken. On the 
way back from Haug's Road one night, Jason maintains that they were so 
scared that he was, "prayin' the rosary. La had this ‘angel on her shoulder’5 
and she kept sayin, 'I'm prayin' to my angel.' And I said, 'The hell with your 
angel, I'm prayin' to God.' I kept asking for a sign, and we passed this guy on 
a motorcycle and he gave me a thumbs-up sign. After that we all felt better." 

By the time they approach Columbia again, the mood is subdued, and 
the teenagers begin to talk of other topics. If it is earlier in the evening, 
however, the story is repeated several times; by the end of the night, it has 
taken a standard narrative form, to be repeated for the benefit of others and 
among themselves, and especially for the next trip. 

The return to the hometown marks the end of the trip to the teenagers. 
One boy told me, "You know, you get home and go, 'Phew!'--like, 'I made it!' 
It feels good--it's fun." Another teenage boy offered: "At the time it's not fun, 
but when you get out of it, then it's like, you know, 'Ain't that cool?'" 

The teenagers typically go on legend trips in the summertime; autumn, 
especially around Halloween, is also a popular time. During the winter, 
legend trip activity usually subsides. Weather conditions are sometimes a 
factor in deciding to go on a trip; foggy nights are ideal, and "on a night with 
a full moon," Jason tells me, "you almost have to go." Some teenagers had 
been at the sites as early as age thirteen; fifteen was more commonly named 
as the age for the first legend trip. The trips continue throughout 
adolescence, though older adolescents report less frequent visits. The 
seventeen-, eighteen-, and nineteen-year-old male informants interviewed 
offered different reasons for going as well: they were often enlisted as 
drivers for the younger crowd, or accompanied their younger girlfriends. 
Teenagers also report that the group can be as small as three or as large as 
ten; no one ever goes alone or as a couple; the group is usually mixed, male 
and female, though some boys sometimes go with a "gang of guys." No all 

15 



 

Meley 

female groups were ever reported. 
In my interviews with the teenagers, I was continually impressed by the 

similarities in the information on legend trips they were sharing with me. I 
heard account after account that was virtually identical in content, form, and 
tone. The teenagers themselves were aware of this and grew impatient, 
insisting, "We already told you everything that happens." When asked to 
characterize the trips, the teens made sweeping generalizations: "You always 
go at night"; "You never go alone"; "Everyone knows what happens there." 
There appeared to be rules to follow and roles to play, and a list of necessary 
ingredients for a successful trip. Trips were taken at night, usually on the 
weekend; dark, gloomy nights, nights with full moons, and around midnight 
all enhanced the atmosphere. Trips were taken by groups, and "the more 
people you can cram in the car, the better." Boys act cool, girls scream a lot. 
Tricks are played on either newcomers or on the females. A sixteen-year-old 
boy, weary of my interminable questioning, succinctly summed up 
adolescent legend trips in Columbia: 

You know, you all get into the car and go over there. And you do 
something--something happens, like--and everybody gets all scared 
and stuff and you get the hell out of there and come home. That's all. 
It's just fun. Okay? 

The ritual structure of legend trips parallels the model of rites of 
passage suggested by Arthur van Gennep. Viewing traditional rites as 
cultural responses to "life crises" among tribal groups, Van Gennep's The 
Rites of Passage (1908) focused on the transitions in social identity that 
individuals and groups face: the passage from childhood to adulthood or 
from single to married status. Van Gennep distinguishes three phases within 
ceremonial rites of passage: separation, when initiates are figuratively or 
literally removed from the society, representing a break with the past status; 
transition, a liminal state when initiates must meet with tasks or challenges 
that symbolically prepare them for their new life; and incorporation, the 
ritual "welcoming" of the newly initiated into the membership of the 
community 

This three part framework is still valid in modem, industrialized 
societies, as Ray Raphael explicates in The Men from the Bovs: Rites of 
Passage in Male America (1988), because the functions of ritual initiations 
remains the same. Raphael writes, 

The primary role of an initiation is to dramatize. . . change, and thereby 
to facilitate it. A rite of passage places a difficult problem of personal 
growth into a social context; it gives a public dimension to private 
problems; it calls upon the combined forces of a culture and all its 

16 



 

Adolescent Legend Trips 

traditions to help the individual get through this time of crisis. (12) 

In our modem, individualistic society, rites of passage may not be immedi-
ately recognizable. Ceremonies like Confirmations, Bar Mitzvahs, and high 
school graduations may appear to be rites of passage for adolescents in 
America, but are often rendered impotent. Solon Kimball, in his introduction 
to Van Gennep's The Rites of Passage, states that "perfunctory ritual may be 
pleasant but meaningless" (xvii). Yet there is still a need for transition 
particularly from extended adolescence into adulthood, as Raphael points 
out. This transition, according to Raphael, Bronner, and others, is not met by 
public, uniform ritual in America. It is therefore privatized, differentiated, 
and spontaneous. 

A comparison of trips from various sources with the trips of Columbia 
teens establishes the legend trip tradition as a ritualized activity of modem 
American adolescents. The physical location of documented legend trip sites 
is consistently rural or isolated, thus requiring a passage from home and 
community to a liminal area or state. Legend trip sites, in addition to having 
a rural setting, are usually an extended distance from the teenagers' homes. 
To reach their destination, teenagers must make a twenty to thirty minute 
drive away from the sanctuary of their hometown (Ellis 66; Hall 233). The 
trips that Bill Ellis surveyed were "invariably rural. . . located along sparsely 
populated roads" (61). Gary Hall describes a "winding road 
. . . shrouded invariably in dense fog" (233). Another legend trip site in Abington, 
Indiana, stands "on the edge of a dense woods" (Knox 1). And Stewart 
Blankenhorn's description of a popular legend trip site near suburban 
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is virtually identical to Columbia teenagers' 
accounts of Haug' s Road: "... the paved road stops. . .. At this point, there 
are no more street lights. . .. The roads, which are only a carwidth, are dirt 
roads that seem to wind without any particular destination" (2). 

Another consistent feature of a legend trip is that it is a communal 
activity shared by adolescents. A "typical" trip almost always includes a 
mixed-sex group of adolescents. Stewart Blankenhorn relates, "The typical 
carload is at least three people, not necessarily all of the same sex. However 
a carload of boys is common and a carload consisting of only girls has not 
been recorded. I recall one situation when I went there in a station wagon 
packed with twelve boys" (2). Gary Hall reports that the trips are usually 
practiced by "a carload or two of young people. . . . Usually boys and girls 
ride in the same car, but seldom as couples" (232-33). 

Informants in recorded trips generally mention drugs and alcohol as an 
ingredient of a successful trip. In The Rites of Passage, Van Gennep also 
reports mood-altering substances as a frequent feature of the symbolic, vivid 
nature of rituals. An informant related the circumstances leading to a 

17 



 

Meley 

legend trip to collector Mark Knox: "We had been drinking one night 
during our junior year and he took me to the bridge where he said the Moss 
Man lived" (1). Similarly, Stewart Blankenhorn reported, "People who visit 
Pitcarin usually are drinking or have been drinking" (1). 

Unlike many of the sites collected by Bill Ellis, the Wall and Haug's 
Road were not used by teenagers as party or parking spots. Ellis notes that 
the sites were marked by the great number of beer cans strewn around, and 
many sites were identified as lovers' lanes (64-65). Yet my informants were 
adamant about this point: no one ever went to the legend trip sites to drink 
or to neck. One informant asked, "Are you crazy? We go parking where it's 
safe." He offered the local high school parking lot as a prudent site. Among 
my informants, moreover, the consumption of alcohol on a legend trip was 
seen as unimportant; many teens claimed to have gone on trips "stone cold 
sober." 

The three-part structure that Kenneth Thigpen discusses was found to 
be a valid pattern in my research. The same structure-introduction, ritual 
enactment, and retrospective memorate--parallels the structure of the rites 
of passage and is apparent in other legend trip accounts. Stewart Blanken-
horn relates, "[On] the journey. . . legends about the Pitcarin family and 
area are exchanged adding suspense to the ride" (2). Gary Hall's ''The Big 
Tunnel" contains a transcript of a taped ride to a legend trip site that clearly 
demonstrates the role of legend-telling as an introduction to the site. Further, 
Linda Dégh discusses the cyclical aspect of how each successive performance 
evolves into a narrative which is then added to the extant legends of the site 
(77-78). 

The legend trip functions as a response to the stresses of generated by 
the transitions inherent in adolescence, transitions that must be managed 
without adult guidance. The age segregation of American teens, coupled with 
the lack of socially-approved means of ritual transition, results in adolescents 
finding their own standards of behavior and their own rites of initiation.6 

The legend trip is an initiation into the family of the peer group, a sign of 
acceptance by other members and a sign of acceptance by the initiate of the 
rules and customs that govern that group. It is an initiation into adulthood, a 
ritual "trying on" of adult roles, and a means of internalizing the demands of 
adulthood. Finally, it is an initiation of identity, a rite of passage into a self 
awakening in adolescence. 

The role of ritual in the development of adolescent identity is related to 
the role of the crisis during the adolescent years (Erikson 17). A crisis-a 
conflict or choice-is a necessary impetus to identity definition. The legend 
trip is a self-induced crisis, deliberately sought by teenagers, for it compels 
the peer group to contemplate behavior and to emerge transformed. Invoking 
rituals such as a legend trip, teenagers make the crisis more manageable 

18 



 

Adolescent Legend Trips 

(Bronner, "Devices" 101-115). It becomes a safe way to experiment with 
various ideologies and feelings, to deal with issues of sexuality, mortality, 
and autonomy, and a viable means of asserting independence and maturity. 

Legend trips serve to strengthen and bind the society of a peer group; 
teens are adamant about "who went which night." Being invited to go on a 
legend trip can be a sign of acceptance into a group; my youngest infor-
mant. Bill, thirteen years old, was proud of his inclusion on several trips 
and, among his younger peers, enjoyed a certain notoriety and elevated 
status by virtue of his acceptance by the older teens. Another teenager who 
was not well-liked asserted her status as a member of the group by the fact 
that she had been included on a certain legend trip. She silenced the cries of 
derision and dismissals of "You weren't there," and ''No, you weren't with us" 
by describing a specific incident from the night in question. As a result, her 
precarious, fringe status was improved, at least for the moment. 

In addition, the trips facilitate the preservation of the group's collective 
identity. As a group, teen boys and girls think of the legend trip sites as 
private domain, belonging exclusively to them. All of my informants were 
surprised to learn that Haug's Road was a popular legend trip site throughout 
the 1970's. By naming and renaming sites, teenagers indicate their sense of 
ownership of a site. Similar to the impulse of pioneers setting out away from 
the "old" community, teenagers, by virtue of naming a spot. claim it as their 
own. Moreover, they exert control over their environment and reserve the site 
for themselves. Grownups may know of the Hans Graft Cemetery, but they 
do not recognize the appellation "The Wall." Even Haug's Road shares a 
subtle element of this. "Haug" is a common name in the area and is 
pronounced "howg"; teenagers go legend-tripping on "Hog's Road." 

When I ask teenagers, "Why do you go?" the younger teens invariably 
answer, "It's the thing to do," or "Evervbodv goes." Again, this indicates the 
need for approval from outside of oneself. Older adolescents are better able to 
internalize their approval, and do not need the peer group's permission to act 
or make choices. Older teenagers commented on the "fun" aspects of the trip 
more, and talked about the trips as big, crazy social gatherings, similar in tone 
to parties. 

Participants in legend trips around Columbia have expectations for 
socially appropriate behavior according to gender. Teenagers insisted that 
girls never, under any circumstances, went on legend trips "alone," in an all-
female group. In addition, I did not encounter a single episode where a girl 
drove a mixed-sex group, though many of the girls I interviewed had access 
to a car. Rather, boys drove the girls to the spots, and at the sites, the girls 
often exhibited different reactions. They screamed more and as one boy 
explained, 'They grab you and stuff. It's kind of neat." 

When boys go on legend trips by themselves, it is a different kind of 

19 



 

Meley 

experience. In all-male groups, the object of the trip is to contain the fear, to 
dismiss the anxiety, and to belittle the frightening aspects of the trip. Paul 
bragged about walking the length of Haug's Road with his buddies, and one 
teenage boy told me, "When just the guys go, it's a macho thing." 

When describing trips in general, the older male adolescents tend to 
describe their exploits in a confident tone. The boys perform more daring 
acts, such as getting out of the car, walking on The Wall, and throwing 
tombstones. One sixteen-year-old boy told me, "Me and Webby got on top of 
the car and rode on the roof' at Haug's Road. Girls of all ages and the younger 
boys focus on the supernatural elements of the trips. The youngest informant 
interviewed told me that just talking about the trips gave him the "creeps," 
and after about twenty minutes he refused to go on. 

As a rite of passage that serves to socialize an individual, the legend 
trip's rigid gender roles suggest that boys and girls must learn different 
lessons in their process of becoming men and women. The girls stressed 
cooperation and interdependence in the performance and narrative of the 
legend trips; they elaborate on the details of the trip-who went along and 
what kind of interaction took place during the trip. While the teenage boys 
brag about their bravado in the face of danger, the girls discuss the trips in 
terms of "we": "we were scared," "we all screamed," and "we all saw it." 
The girls also exhibit a passivity and dependence on the males of the group; 
they never go alone and seem to rely on the boys for both protection and to 
tease them about their fright. 

The boys, on the other hand, display a competitive denial of fear. Many 
times in my interviews, boys would point out that while others were losing 
composure, they themselves remained calm: "You know, they were all 
screaming and shit, I told them to chill out." When describing trips, they 
tended to use words like "neat," "wild," "crazy," and "great" compared to the 
female's "scary" and "awful." Male teenagers use the trips to test and prove 
their masculinity; only the boys talked about attempting daring feats at 
legend trip sites. 

The legend trip also helps to alleviate the sexual anxiety of both the boys 
and the girls. Despite the apparent sexual sophistication of my informants, 
the fear of rejection remains intense. The nature of the trips--mixed-sex 
groups crammed into close quarters--gives teenagers an opportunity to be 
physically close without having to express the desire to touch. In the frenzy 
that takes place inside the car, both boys and girls have a chance to satisfy 
needs for physical contact without excess, commitment, or fear of rejection. 

Newly acquired skills in reasoning enable teenagers to contemplate death 
in a new way. Adolescents can become almost obsessed with death, drawn to 
the morbid and supernatural, or indulge in fantasies about their own deaths. 
Paradoxically, to the outside world, teenagers may appear 

20 



 

Adolescent Legend Trips 

completely unconcerned with death, and may actually tempt fate with 
reckless, death-defying behavior. "The way I figure it," one informant told me 
in an offhand manner, "is we all have to die sometime." 

This nonchalant attitude belies the sometimes profound fear that 
adolescents have of their own mortality associated with independence. In a 
world like ours, death and destruction are daily fodder for the media. At the 
same time, adult society does not condone open discussion of death and dying. 
This point was especially apparent in the course of my research. A sixteen-
year-old informant with leukemia died in March after a long 
struggle with the disease. The other teenagers were visibly shaken and several 
gathered in my apartment after the viewing. One boy related that in school that 
day there were counselors to assist the students. "I went to talk with one," the 
boy told me. "She told me to go and eat lunch and that was supposed to make 
me feel better." He was openly disgusted with adult guidance. 

In lieu of a support system and an acceptable method of dealing with death 
and dying, teenagers are once again left to their own means. The ritual of the 
legend trip is an aid in helping teenagers confront issues of death and mortality 
in a psychologically safe way. Without risking their lives, teenagers can 
simulate the experience of looking death in the face, 
and this helps them to "exorcise" their fears about dying. 

My informants expressed an ambivalence about their hometown. Well 
aware of Columbia's "black sheep" status among neighboring communities, the 
teenagers are distrustful of outsiders and are easily and often provoked into 
fighting to defend their town's honor. At the same time, among themselves, 
they complain bitterly about Columbia. "This town sucks," one boy casually 
summed it up. Most teens express a desire to "get out" as quickly as possible. 
For many of my informants, the chance will not come. For these teenagers, the 
legend trip may be a symbolic escape out of town. 

Ellis interprets the legend trip as a ritual of rebellion. The trips include 
features of acts against social norms and expectations, demonstrated by the 
under-age drinking and acts of vandalism, but the rebelliousness is more an 
outcome than a purpose of the ritual. Because the rebellion is ritualized, it 
is transformed; through the ritualization of the challenge to adult authority, 
teenagers make their challenge both manageable and comprehensible. The 
activity takes place deliberately away from the locus of adult power and 
control, and is guarded against the possibility of adult interference or even 
knowledge. The legend trip, though superficially incorporating the face of 
anti-social activity, is not a delinquent behavior. It is not an overt challenge 
to society but is rendered a private ritual in which teenagers assert their 
independence from adult control innocuously. 

The search for independence is a primary motivation for legend trips. 
This is reinforced by the physical structure of the trips. Legend trip sites are 

21 



 

Meley 

removed through time and space from the adolescents' hometown. Unlike 
party or parking spots, which are chosen for their convenience as well as 
their seclusion from prying adults, the legend trip site requires a journey of 
considerable distance from the town. Although a number of cemeteries and 
sites could be characterized as "spooky" within the town's limits, teenagers 
deliberately travel away from what they consider to be the locus of parental 
and societal control in order to have a chance to try on adult roles for 
themselves. 

The legend trip provides teenagers with a setting in which to test their 
new found, adult courage. It gives teenagers a opportunity to prove their 
ability to take care of themselves in a crisis. Finally, the legend trip also 
offers teenagers the chance to return to the sanctuary of home when they 
have had enough of the adult world of risk and responsibility. Without a 
chance to test the limits, to question authority, to live and learn, teenagers 
cannot incorporate the values, the lessons, the judgment, and, essentially, the 
integrated identity they will need to cross the threshold to maturity, able and 
willing to meet the stresses and challenges of adulthood in modem American 
society. 

In the absence of meaningful, adult-sanctioned rites of passage, 
teenagers must create their own. The legend trip serves this function in 
modem society, for unlike tribal cultures, which celebrate initiation rites 
rarely in an individual's lifetime, modem American teenagers must repeat the 
ritual over and over again. Because their incorporation into adult society is 
not acknowledged by that society, teenagers must, on an individual basis, 
make a judgment about their own level of maturity. The repetition of the 
legend trip throughout the adolescent years reinforces and validates the 
teenagers' growth as individuals and as young adults. 

The vitality of the teenage tradition of the legend trip is thus strength-
ened, and the continuity of trips is assured. A sixteen-year-old girl shared the 
story of her first legend trip with me and revealed how the trips will continue 
in Columbia. Having never been on a legend trip, she was ambivalent about 
going, but yielded to peer pressure: "They said they couldn't believe that I 
wasn't ever there before. They kept telling me all this weird stuff about it, 
you know, and man, I didn't want to go. But they were all saying, 'Oh, you 
gotta go' and all." Once at the site, she reports that the boys "showed off' by 
getting out of the car, and they teased the girls for their timidity, saying, 
'''C'mon, get out and walk the wall.''' The girls, true to their legend trip role, 
"wouldn't, you know. We were just sitting in the car saying, 'You're crazy.'" 
The event climaxed when "this 
dog, it sounded like a wolf, it started barking and somebody said that it was 
twelve o'clock midnight, and we started screaming and flipping out. So the 
guys get back in the car and we got out of there real fast." But that was not 
the end of the trip for my informant. She now had a story to tell, and, im- 

22 



 

Adolescent Legend Trips 

portantly, an experience to share: "When we got home I was still shaking, 
but it was cool, you know, because the next day, I told my girlfriend about 
it, and I told her that she had to go. So we're gonna take her, maybe this 
weekend." 

The context she provides for her adolescent folklore helps to uncover 
the base, compelling reasons why teenagers "have to go" on legend trips. 
Ultimately she, like others, speaks of transition from adolescence to 
adulthood, a transition made all the more stressful in a fragmented, indi-
vidualistic society. The legend trip provides teenagers with a culturally 
appropriate and comprehensible response. 
Heritage Center of Lancaster County, Lancaster, PA 

Notes 
1Though published literature on the urban legend trip is scant, brief interviews reveal that 

the tradition is found within the city limits. A thirty-five-year-old Harrisburg man told me that, 
as a teenager, he and his friends wallced to a city graveyard to see "Fidget Widgets," creatures 
that he described as "outer spacemen." Teenagers at the Harrisburg Middle School report going 
to the same cemetery to see the Fidget Widgets, but they claim the scary creatures are video 
game characters. 

2 A thorough, recent history of Columbia, Pennsylvania, remains to be written. One 
available source is History of Lancaster County. by Franklin Ellis and Samuel Evans, published 
in Philadelphia by Everts and Peck in 1883. An invaluable glimpse of Columbia at the height of 
the town's prosperity was provided by James D. Slade's A Complete Business Directory of 
Columbia. Lancaster Countv. Pennsylvania. Together with a Few of the Most Important Events 
of the Borough's Past. and a Correct Pen Picture of Columbia in 1887, published in Columbia 
by the Evening Star Job Office in 1887. I also relied on the information I acquired at Wright's' 
Ferry Mansion, a private museum in Columbia where I worked as a tour guide in 1988. 

3 I have been unsuccessful in my attempt to identify "Hans Graft." 

4My brother, Nick Meley, born in 1955, told me that his first legend trip to 
Haug's Road was as a high school sophomore in 1970 . 

5"Angel on my Shoulder" refers to a tiny angel pin worn on the shoulder for a blessing 
or as a good luck charm. The pins are popular in Columbia among both children and adults. 

6Simon Bronner discusses how children in modern America similarly use 
folklore in lieu of adult guidance in American Children's Folklore. Ray Raphael 
argues similarly for young males in American society in The Men from the Boys. 

Works Cited: Published Books and Articles 

Bronner, Simon. American Children's Folklore. Little Rock: August, 1988. 

 ---- "Left to Their Own Devices: Interpreting American Children's Folklore as an 
Adaptation to Aging." Southern Folklore 47 (1990): 101-115. 

23 



 

Meley 
Clements, William M. 'The Chain on the Tombstone." Indiana Folklore: A Reader 
 Ed. Linda Degh. 258-264. Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1980. 

Degh, Linda. 'The Haunted Bridges Near Avon and Danville and Their Role in 
 Legend Formation." Indiana Folklore 2 (1969): 55-74. 

Ellis, William. "Legend-Tripping in Ohio: A Behavioral Study." Papers in 
 Comparative Study 2 (1983): 61-73. 

Erikson, Erik. Identity: Youth and Crisis. New York: Norton: 1968. 

Hall, Gary 'The Big Tunne1." Indiana Folklore: A Reader Ed. Linda Degh. 
 Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1980. 225-257. 

Raphael, Ray. The Men from the Boys: Rites of Passage in Male America. Lincoln: 
 U of Nebraska P, 1988. 

Thigpen, Kenneth A., Jr. "Adolescent Legends in Brown County: A Survey." 
 Indiana Folklore 4 (1971): 141-215. 

Van Gennep, Arnold. The Rites of Passage. Trans. Monika B. Vizedom and 
 Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1960. 

Works Cited: Unpublished Sources 

Blankenhorn, Stewart. "Pitcarin." Unpublished manuscript, The Penn State 
Harrisburg Folklore Archives, 1983, Accession #83-024. 

Knox, Mark. "The Moss Man." Unpublished manuscript, Indiana University 
 Folklore Archives, 1971, Accession #71-321. 

Informants: Oral Sources 
1. Jason, 15, German, Catholic 
2. Paul, 17, German, Protestant 
3. La, 16, Black, African Methodist 
4. Julie, 15, German, Catholic 

  5. Charlie, 16, German, Catholic 
  6. Rob, 16, German, Episcopalian  
  7. Jen, 16, German, Episcopalian 
  8. Hosee, 16, Filipino, Catholic 
 9. Kathy, 15, German, Lutheran 
10. Danielle, 16, Italian, Catholic 
11. Brandi, 16, German, Catholic 
12. Marisa, 16, German, Lutheran 
13. Amita, 17, Indian, Hindu 
14. Angie, 16, German, Catholic 
15. Bill, 17, German, Catholic 
16. Wolfgang, 16, German, Lutheran  
17. Randy, 16, German, Methodist  
18. Faith, 16, Black/German, Baptist  
19. Duane, 19, Black/Hispanic, African 

Methodist 
20. Bill, 13, German, Catholic 
21. Bucket, 17, Black 

24 

22. Tara, 18, Black 
23. Helen, 14, Irish/Italian/Black 
24. Nestor, 15, Black/Hispanic, Baptist 
25. Amy, 16, Mexican, Pentecostal  
26. Evie, 17, German, Atheist 
27. Chris, 14, German, Protestant 
28. Latrease, 18, Black, Baptist 
29. R.J., 18, German 
30. Phil, 15, German, Lutheran 
31. Michelle, 19, Black/German 
32. Scott, 17, Black/German, African 

Methodist 
33. Heidi, 15, German, Catholic 
34. Bo, 18, Black 
35. Carol, 17, German, Mormon 
36. Tiekey, 17, Black, Baptist 
37. Emily, 14, German, Catholic 
38. Jeff, 15, Black/Hispanic, African 

Methodist 
39. Mike, 18, Black, Baptist 
40. Phil, 17, Black, Baptist 
41. Kurt, 17, Black, Baptist 



 

Strategy in Counting-Out: Evidence 
from Saint-Nazaire, France  
Andy Arleo 

In a study based on the ethnography of speaking approach, 
Goldstein described and analyzed various strategies used in 
counting-out by four- to fourteen- year old children in the East 
Mount Airy section of northwest Philadelphia in 1966-67. 
Goldstein observed that, although he had been informed orally 
of similar or other counting-out strategies employed in other 
parts of the United States, Canada, Europe, and Africa, there 
were to his knowledge no published accounts of these (178, n. 
15). The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the cross-
cultural investigation of children's folklore by providing data 
on counting-out strategies used in Saint-Nazaire, France.1 My 
field work was initially undertaken for a doctoral dissertation 
(Arleo 1982) involving the comparative study of counting-out 
rhymes in French and English. Research methods included 
observation, interviews and recording in play areas and in the 
classrooms of several elementary schools, as well as the 
collection of written documents (texts, drawings, descriptions, 
questionnaires) from children and adults. Additional collecting 
of counting-out and other children's rhymes has been carried 
out since 1982 to the present time in Saint-Nazaire and the 
surrounding areas.2 

The Countimr-Out Ceremonv in France. 

From my own data and that of other researchers it appears 
that counting-out is a widespread activity among schoolchildren 
of both sexes.3  Certain counting-out rhymes are learned from 
parents, siblings or peers at an early age (around 2 or 3 years 
old), but are not actually used for selection purposes until the 
end of the Ecole Maternelle, roughly at the age of 4 or 5. At this 
stage performance is usually awkward, often marked by poor 
coordination between the rhyme and the gestures. Counting-out 
really blossoms in elementary school, but by Cours Moyen 2 
(grade 5) many children consider it to be a somewhat "babyish" 
occupation. The function of counting-out is to choose an "It" 
(often called le Loup, "the Wolf', or "le Chat", "the Cat") in 
popular children's games like tag (jouer au Loup) or hide and 
seek (cache-cache). The counting-out procedure used in Saint-
Nazaire is similar to that described by Goldstein: the players are 
seated in a circle and a 

25 



 

Arleo 

counter, often self-appointed, taps each player's foot on each syllable or 
each beat of the rhyme, almost always in a clockwise direction. Occasion-
ally, as with "One potato, two potato. . .", fists rather than feet are desig-
nated and in this case a special rhyme is employed. According to some 
reports, counting-out also occurs with all players standing and the counter 
pointing at or tapping each person's chest. 
The Use of Strategy in Counting-Out. 

A survey on counting-out was conducted in 1981 at the Bibliotheque 
Municipale in Saint-Nazaire. 67 children (45 girls and 22 boys) filled out 
questionnaires, occasionally with the help of the librarians. Most of the 
respondents (nearly 70%) were in elementary school; only 2 children were 
still in nursery school (Ecole Maternelle) and 16 were in secondary school. 
Among the questions on counting-out were two related to the use of strategy. 
It was decided to frame these questions with the verb tricher, "to cheat," as 
this is an easily understood word employed frequently by children. Thus, the 
first question on strategy was formulated "Est-ce qu'il y a des enfants qui 
trichent en 'pouffant'?" (Are there children who cheat when counting-out?). 
The verb "pouffer" is a term used by children to mean "to count out". It is 
derived from the nonsense syllables "pouf pouf' spoken before counting-out 
begins. The second question was "Si oui, comment font-ils pour tricher?" (If 
yes, how do they cheat?). 

55 (82.1 %) of the 67 respondents answered that children do cheat when 
counting-out, against 9 (13.4%) who answered that they do not, and 3 non-
responses. It seemed interesting to look into possible correlations between 
the answer given to this question and the age or sex of the respondent. 
Specifically, I investigated the hypothesis that awareness of "cheating" 
would increase with age. It turns out that among the youngest informants 
(age 6 or 7) 10 answered "yes", i.e. children do cheat, and none answered 
"no" (one person did not answer). In fact, it was in the 8-9 age group that the 
"no" rate was highest, reaching 26.3% (5 out of 19 informants). Surprisingly 
enough, 4 informants aged 10 or above, all girls, also answered "no". My 
hypothesis was therefore not confirmed, at least for this limited population. 
The correlation between the answer to this question and the sex of the 
respondent seems tenuous as there was only a slight difference between male 
and female informants: 10% of the boys (2 out of 20) answered "no" 
compared to 15.6% of the girls (7 out of 45). The three non-responses all 
came from boys. 

There were a variety of answers to the second question on how children 
cheat. Tile most frequent response (16 out of the 44 informants who 
answered the question) was "ils 'sautent' des joueurs" (they "skip over" 
players). This was followed by 7 respondents who said "they think it over 

26 



 

Counting-Out 

ahead of time" (variants: they calculate, they "count in their heads"). A 
related response, mentioned six times, was "they start with themselves." 
Other techniques noted less frequently were: the same person is counted 
twice (4 informants), "by going fast" (3 informants), "they forget to include 
themselves in order to avoid being the Wolf', "they skip a turn", "they count 
out twice", "they add words" (2 informants for each of the last four 
techniques). Although some of these answers are difficult to interpret, it is 
nevertheless clear that the "skipping over" technique, whether applied to the 
counter or to another player, is quite widespread. 

Regarding the technique of adding extra words, mentioned twice, it 
should be added that there is a special rhyme, or coda, which is used for this 

purpose. This is illustrated by the following example: 

Pouf pouf. Ca sera toi le Loup, mais comme le roi et la reine ne le 
veulent pas, ça ne sera pas toi. 

Pouf pouf. You will be the Wolf, but as the king and the queen don't 
want this (to happen), it won't be you. 

Source: 9 year old boy, in 4th grade, Ecole Primaire Minot, La Laule, 
recorded in 1985. 

In the numerous examples of this type, the clause beginning with mais 
("but") always follows a short counting-out rhyme which could stand on its 
own. Here then is an example of a linguistic device (as opposed to "skipping 
over" or "calculation") used for strategic purposes. It may even be argued 
that this coda contributes to language development by increasing awareness 
of the contrastive function denoted by the conjunction mais. Moreover, by 
invoking the "king and the queen" to preclude the choice of a particular 
player, the counter shifts his or her responsibility to a higher authority, thus 
making it more difficult for the other participants to challenge the final 
outcome. 

Conclusion. 

The results of the above survey, although based on a small population, 
show that strategy is a part of the counting-out procedure used in Saint-
Nazaire, France, and that, even at a young age, children are generally aware 
that liberties can be taken with "an idealized set of rules" (Goldstein 172) 
through the use of different verbal or non-verbal devices. Furthermore, a 
number of techniques mentioned by Goldstein, such as "skipping over", 
"calculation" or "rhyme extension" appear to be practiced in France as well.4   
Data from other folklorists suggest that similar ploys are utilized 

27 



 

Arleo 

elsewhere.5  It has long been known that counting-out, a game in itself and a 
preparation for other games, is a widespread genre of children's folklore. The 
use of strategy in this context implies that cross-cultural similarities involve 
performance as well as textual features and also raises questions about how 
this form of children's play contributes to social and cognitive development. 
Our exploration of this field, however, has barely begun: in order to pursue 
research on these and related issues in a fruitful way, it will be necessary to 
obtain data from children's folklorists working within a wide range of 
cultures. 

lnstitut Universitaire de Technologie de Saint-Nazaire and Centre d'Etudes 
Metriques, Université de Nantes 

Notes 
1Saint-Nazaire (1990 pop. 65,380), located on the mouth of the Loire River (60 

kilometers southwest of Nantes), famous for its shipbuilding industry, is traditionally 
perceived as a working-class town. In recent years, however, there has been a 
diversification of economic activities and as a result most of my informants could be 
described as coming from both working class and middle class families. Although 
there are social differences from one neighborhood to another, these do not seem to 
be reflected in the material I have collected or in the way it is performed. 

2For further details see Arleo (1988) and Arleo & Flament (1988). The latter is 
an experimental study based on the acoustic analysis of the French counting-out 
rhyme "Une poule sur un mur". 

3The standard work on French counting-out rhymes is Baucomont et al (1961). 
More recent data can be found in Brinton (1985) and Hazael-Massieux (1987). 
Laforte (1987) is a very complete compilation of published texts of children's songs 
and rhymes in French. 

4As far as I know, few researchers have explored the use of strategy in 
counting-out among French-speaking children.  Picard (1970), in her interesting 
book on mathematics and children’s games, devotes a chapter to “Counting-out 
rhymes, or how to cheat” (66-75).  This is a description and formalization of the 
“calculation method” mentioned both by Goldstein and my informants. 

5 According to folklorist Erik K. Nielsen (letter dated Nov. 1 and 15, 1981), 
Danish children sometimes use strategy by extending the counting-out rhyme or by 
putting in an extra word or line. This is usually done by older or more sophisticated 
children with younger participants. Ase Enerstvedt (letter dated Nov. 8, 1981) writes 
that some Norwegian children "know how to manipulate the rhymes to get a certain 
outcome". Furthermore, all children are aware of this possibility and even small 
children (age 5, for example) may master the technique. Devices include 
manipulation 'of stress and rhythm, place-changing and rhyme extension. Finally, 
Bengt af Klintberg (letter dated Oct. 26, 1981) has heard that children in Sweden 
often use strategies to influence the result of counting-out. 

 

Works Cited 

Arleo, A. Une etude comparative des comptines françaises et anglaises. Doctorat 

28 



 

Counting-Out 

de troisieme cycle, Université de Nantes, 1982. 

Arleo, A. Fonnulettes d'élimination recueillies a Saint-Nazaire. en Brière et dans la 
Presqu’île Guérandaise. Université de Nantes (Centre d'Etudes Métriques), 
1988. 

Arleo, A. and B. Flament. '''Une poule sur un mur…’:  rythme et mélodie d'une 
comptine à partir d'une analyse mingographique". Le Français Moderne 56.5 
(1988): 33-59. 

Baucomont, J. et al. Les comptines de langue française. Paris: Editions Seghers, 
 1961. 

Brinton, R. The Southern French Child at Play: A study of his traditional lore. 
 Diss, University of Bath, 1985. 

 Goldstein, K. "Strategy in Counting Out: An Ethnographic Fo1klore Field Study." 
 The Study of Games. Ed. E. Avedon and B. Sutton-Smith. New York: John 
 Wiley, 167-178. 

Hazaël-Massieux, M.-C. Chansons des Antilles, comptines, fonnulettes. Paris: 
 Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1987. 

Laforte, Co Le catalogue de la chanson folklorique française V" Chansons brèves 
 (Les enfantines). Quebec: Les Presses de l'Université Laval, 1987. 

29 



 

The Concept "Toy" and Cultural Research 
Bo Lonnqvist 

In Finland and Sweden, the 1980s discussions on the harmful 
influence that so-called military toys were said to have on 
children evoked a pronounced interest in the overall form and 
function of the toy in today's culture. The great collectors' 
interest in toys and recurring reports on rising auction prices 
for old toys have also contributed to making the subject 
topical. Critical voices maintain that today toys express the 
consumer society's predilection for fashion, meaning the 
predilection for change. 

The "toy," as it is understood in public debate and in 
Western culture in general, is above all a product of the adults' 
view of children, of physical objects, and of children in 
relation to physical objects. This approach 
has developed simultaneously with the golden age of the 
European toy industry, between 1860 and 1930, a period when 
toys quite tangibly reflect the ideals of the bourgeois society. 
The toy is an object manufactured by 
adults, and it has one unequivocal function that the child 
is supposed to realize in play. This definition has 
coloured public consciousness, expositions, collections in 
museums, and scientific research. This goes to show 
how strong the impact of the adults' view of children's culture 
has been for over a hundred years. 

I will start by discussing various ways of treating the toy 
in anthropologically-oriented cultural research. I will then, as 
cases in point, refer to studies on children's play 
in a modem urban environment in Finland. I will project this 
against a background of examples from earlier centuries. I will 
finish by discussing the concept "toy" in the adult world and 
in the world of the children. In my view the concept mirrors 
different aspects of the cultural pattern, on the one hand the 
position of children in 
society, on the other hand their position in culture. I dare 
maintain that children's culture, including the tools used 
in play in a way which expresses a specific type of formative 
creativity, has been generally overlooked. 
This opens up new vistas for both field studies and theoretical 
reasoning focusing on the cognitive dimensions of physical 
objects and on specific group cultures. 

 

31 



 

Lonnqvist 

Toys were for the first time assembled as a group of their own at the 
Christmas exhibition of the Germanisches National museum in 
Nuremberg in the 1890s. As late as the 1880s, dolls, for instance, had 
been put on show as part of the costumes exhibition. The spread of toys 
in Europe in the 19th century was largely coupled with bourgeois 
Christmas celebrations. The scientific view of toys was likewise 
coloured by this fact: toys were seen as a pastime and as connoisseur 
objects. 

For research on cultural history, and for collectors, the toy became 
an instructive object bearing witness to cultural varieties, different 
stages of civilization, the history of crafts, and the need for social and 
aesthetic representation throughout history. As far as type selection and 
design were concerned, it was maintained that these remained 
unchanged through the centuries (Grober 1928, Groos 1899, Boehn 
1929). This view is historical. In his global overview Peepshow into 
Paradise in 1953, Lesley Gordon divided his exposition into a section 
on chronology and a section on types and regions. This evolutionary 
view of toys also contains an inventory of the function of the toy at 
celebrations and as cult objects, such as painted eggs and dolls. Most 
studies on and exhibitions of specific types of toys reiterate this 
historical-geographic approach. The toys of Greek antiquity as well as 
exotic and prehistoric toys have been described typologically, even 
though an often stated difficulty is the distinction between toys used 
simply for playing, and toys with a double function: ritual-religious, 
and as components in children's play (so the doll). As late as The 
Encvclopedia of Tovs (London 1978), Constance Eileen King divided 
the material as follows: 1) Miniature Living, 2) Toys purely for 
pleasure, 3) Wheeled toys & children's transport. 4) Metal toys, 5) 
Board and table games, 6) Educational toys and pastimes. 

Towards the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th, research 
on children's play was based on Kant's definition of the spirit of play as 
partly a free, individually chosen activity, partly an end in itself, which 
had its roots in a biological play instinct characterized by such factors 
as superfluous energy, imitation, repetition, and supplementary activity. 
Parallels were drawn between art and the creative urge of the child 
(Paul Hildebrandt, Das Spielzeug im Leben des Kindes, 1904/1979). 

Ethnographic research has focused particularly on tradition and 
imitation. Early anthropological monographs on the cultures of various 
tribes mention toys briefly in connection with games and sports, songs 
and dances. The general consensus was that toys imitated the objects 
used in everyday life, or that the small figures could be connected with 
magic. Examples of this kind may be found 

32 



 

The Concept "Toy" 

in the classical studies of the Siberian Tjuktji and Korjaks, led by 
Franz Boas (Bogoras, Jochelson, 1904-09,1908. The Jesup North 
Pacific Expedition). Functionalist studies in social anthropology have 
also dealt with playing, and the tools used therein, as a means of 
forming and adopting the individual to social life (Granqvist 1947, 
Klepzig 1972, Itkonen 1941: Arabs in Palestine, African children, 
Sami people). Moreover, ethnological studies have described the 
manufacture of toys as crafts and home industry, in a wider perspec-
tive of ecology and economy, art history and cultural history. 

After the 1920s, the influence of historical-geographical and 
functionalist views and structuralist and paedagogic-psychological 
theories has slowly brought about a problemization of the concept 
"toy." The overall tendency has been to fit the "inconspicuous" toy 
into a wider context, as an illustration of cultural attitudes in general, 
and as a: meaning-carrying tool in the entity of the play situation. 
Classical studies of children's play, written by Yrjö Hirn (1916) and 
Johann Huizinga (1938), are forerunners of psychological research on 
toys. 

As early as 1957, the ethnologist Reinhard Peesch, in Das 
Berliner Kinderspiel der Gegenwart, directed attention to the great 
variations of form in children's play, and to the restructuring of play as 
a continuous process. In his 1959 study of children's play and its 
changes on New Zealand, Brian Sutton-Smith expressed similar 
thoughts. The structure of the play repertoire showed the children as 
being both conservative and innovative, and their need for patterns 
was supplemented by a flexibility which was based on their actual 
experiences. The Danish psychologist Jens Sigsgaard has in his 
definition of the toy (1982) introduced the concept "imagination," the 
capability of transferring observations from the "level of reality" to 
conceptions of a more "unreal" character, a creative quality specific to 
children. By this approach the symbol-carrying function of toys 
acquires central importance. With the aid of play, and the tools of play, 
reality may be both negated, deepened, and accorded continuous 
changeability (Lili E. Peller). In paedagogics, Hans Scheuerl says that 
earlier game theories treated playas a definite course of events, an 
"internal-subjective" process. But in play, "external-subjective" 
objects, rules, and partners are equally needed, and thus play must also 
be seen as symbolic interaction. This leads us to the theories (Erikson, 
Wygotzki) in which the structure of play is seen as a particular type of 
abstraction. In anthropological research on play, the relations between 
reality and imagination, the qualities attributed to objects, and their 
symbolic variations in meaning also acquire focal interest (Buytendijk 
1973). 

33 



 
 

Lonnqvist 

When reality is made to vary in the course of play, there arises a 
peculiar relation between the meaning and the significance of the toy. 
The object will maintain its factual significance (in an operational 
sense), but a new act provides it with new meaning, or "additional 
meaning." This relation is borne out by a child "playing around" an 
object (Alexander Leontjew, Jean Piaget). What fascinates me 
personally is the repertoire of meanings of objects and the cultural 
arrangements that the children express in their symbolical treatment of 
the objects during play, and I will give you an example. Here we must 
expand the concept "toy," and I would prefer to talk about "play tools." 
 
    * 
 

An approach having close affinities to a more cognitive anthropological 
view of the objects in the child's world will prove fruitful in the 
interpretation of illustrations dating back to the 16th and 17th centuries. 
It will also gainsay the common misconception that children did not 
possess toys in the olden days, especially not the children of common 
people. The well-known picture by the older Pieter Brueghel of children 
playing in a small Dutch village in 1560 shows that the components of 
the playing consist of the children's own bodies and the entire 
surroundings: fences and beams, sand heaps and bricks, barrels, trestles, 
sticks and stones, trees and animals. Of what is conventionally regarded 
as toys there are only a cock-horse, whirligigs, balls, stilts and barrel 
hoops, a few dolls and a doll's cradle. Similarly, in Jacques Stella's 
illustrated publication Les jeux et plaisirs de l'enfance (1657), most of 
the play tools are things deriving their meaning from the process of 
playing: there are masks to frighten others with, an earthenware jug for 
breaking hung on a tree branch, a fire to be jumped over, the body of 
another child to ride upon. 

Oral tradition reflecting Finnish urban and rural popular culture 
towards the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century also bears out 
the fact that practically all objects in the physical surroundings could be 
used to play with. Tools, household utensils, and above all the domestic 
animals functioned as projections for the children's view of the world. 

A game known in various parts of the Nordic countries as "Jacob's 
ladder," "the Sheep's Heaven," or "the Celestial Ladder," was played for 
instance by shepherd boys in Satakunta in Western Finland. This game 
illustrates the principle of the staircase or ladder in culture, the 
connection between things heavenly and things of the earth. This shows 
that the objects produced by the children them 

34 



 

The Concept "Toy" 

selves are not exclusively imitations of the tools of the adults. There is a 
collection of bricks dating back to the 15th century, from the 
Tavastehus (Fi. Hameenlinna) castle, which bear the imprints of 
children's and animals' feet--they have probably run across the bricks 
while they were drying, or else jumped on them. The footprints show 
that the children were of different ages. It may have been a forbidden 
game, but nevertheless it shows an activity linked to the work of the 
adults, and the children have played in a group, together with the 
animals. 

Quite recently a girl of twelve (my daughter) informed me that "on 
a beach," she had found a beautiful boat of polystyrene with a sail made 
out of a plastic bag. "You could photograph that for your collection" 
was her judgement, and we went to find the place. This is in the very 
heart of Helsinki, a stone desert where one does not expect to encounter 
children at play. "The beach" turned out to be a small strip of sand 
under a narrow quay of planks. Under this plank structure, which an 
adult person could not enter, the boat lay. It was a somewhat formless 
rectangular piece of expanded polystyrene with a piece of wood tucked 
in as keel, half a plastic bottle as boathouse, and a sea bird plume as a 
bowsprit. The mast lay beside the boat, with a plastic bag over it as a 
sail. At the end of the jetty there were traces of a "harbour," two pieces 
of planks laid across stones. The playing children would probably come 
back and possibly even produce other things, as the edge of the water 
was laden with all kinds of "refuse" that had not yet been cleaned away 
by the harbour authorities. 

Consequently children's play is still alive, in a form unorganized 
by adults, in hidden places, with objects that derive their meaning from 
the play situation-not with the one-dimensional aspect given to it in 
advance by adults. It is obvious that the play tools will reflect the 
physical environment. But in all its occasional character, imitation is a 
creative process directed by those playing, and the properties for play 
have a role integrated in the playing itself. 

Topical studies on children's play behaviour in urban environments 
in the Nordic countries have criticized the extremely limited aspects of 
the children's environments. Studies of children's behaviour in modern 
housing areas in Helsinki, for instance, have shown that the play areas 
do not attract children as long as there are other alternatives such as 
pedestrian streets, market squares, and unbuilt areas. However, play 
with stones and trees in the natural environment as well as ball games 
and role play are disappearing. Do children lack inspiration from the 
world of the adults? Are children so strictly programmed for adult-
directed games in planned play areas that their own initiative and 
creative urge are drying up? Will certain games 

35 



 

Lonnqvist 

simply disappear, without being superseded by others? Will children's 
relations to objects in play be changed due to a formally perfect selection, 
though restricted in types, of industrially produced toys? 

Previous analyses of toys have viewed the objects as paedagogic and 
instrumental in the learning process, the objects influencing the children. 
But objects have also been studied in a ritual-emotional-magical 
perspective, as objects of knowledge for children. Both 
aspects bear witness to children's position in the community. 

Anthropological study of toys could focus on the unlimited repertoire 
of meaning of objects in play, and the unlimited forms of adult life in the 
play world of the children. As a process of reflection and consideration, 
the transformations of the objects will then reveal the central structure of 
the world of physical objects in play. Children's culture, the true domain of 
the children, offers us samples of another world, other "narrating" and 
"figurative" (Umberto Eco) traditions than our conventional ones. It is 
difficult to document the actual semantic relations within children's 
culture, as this culture is elusive in the extreme. The principle of 
transformation, which is the characteristic form of abstraction in children's 
culture, works at the flash of an eyelid, and the attraction of play seems at 
least partly to reside in the fact that it is beyond the reach of adults. 

* 

An extremely topical question comes to my mind concerning children's 
play and play tools in today's world-a world where overconsumption 
and hunger, refugee camps, children in war, child prostitution, child 
labour, and where a harsh, urban, and technocratic environment are 
realities. This question is: On whose conditions do children really 
play? 

Academy of Finland 

Works Cited 

von Boehn, M. Dolls. New York: Dover, 1972. 

Bogoras, W. The Chukchee. The Jesup North Pacific Expedition. Ed. Franz Boas. 
Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History. Vol. VII. Leiden-New 
York. Reprint 1975. 

Buytendijk, F.J.J. Das menschliche Spielen. Kulturanthropologie. Neue Anthro-
pologie herausgegeben von Hans-Georg Gadamer und Paul Vogler. Band 4. 
Stuttgart, 1973. 88-120. 

Eco, U. "Ett foto."Vad kostar ett masterverk?  Malmo: Brombergs Bokforlag AB, 
 1987. 220-224. 

36 



 

The Concept "Toy" 

Gordon, L. Peepshow into Paradise. London: George Harrap, 1953. 

Granqvist, H. Birth and Childhood Among the Arabs.  Helsingfors: Soderstrom, 
1947. 

Groos, K. Die Spiele der Menschen.  Jena:  Verlag Gustav Fischer, 1899. 

Grober, K. Kinderspielzeug aus alter Zeit. Eine Geschichte des Spielzeugs. Berlin: 
 Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1928. 

Hildebrandt, P. Das Spielzeug im Leben des Kindes. 1904. Dusseldorf-Koln: 
 Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1979. 

Hirn, Y. Barnlek. Helsingfors: Soderstrom, 1916. 

Huizinga, J. Den lekande manniskan. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1945. 

Itkonen, J. "Die Spiele, Unterhaltungen und Kraftproben der Lappen." Journal de 
 la Societe Finno-Ourgrienne 51. Helsinki, 1941-42. 
 
Jochelson, W. The Koryak. The Jesup North Pacific Expedition. Ed. Franz Boas. 
 Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History. Vo1. VI. Leiden-New 
 York, Reprint 1975. . 

King, C.E. The Encyclopedia of Toys. London: Robert Hale, 1978. 

Klepzig, F. Kinderspiele der Bantu. Meisenheim am Glan: Verlag Anton 
Hain,1972. 

Leontjew, A.N. "Realistik und Phantasie im Spie1." Das Kinderspiele. Texte, 
herausgegeben von Andreas Flitner. München: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1978. 
133-138. 

Peller, L.E. "Modelle des Kinderspiels." Das Kinderspiele. Texte, herausgegeben 
 yon Andreas Flitner. München: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1978. 93-107. 

Peesch, R. Das Berliner Kinderspeile der Gegenwart. Duetsche Akademie der 
 Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Veröffentlichungen des Instituts fur deutsche 
 Volkskunde. Band 14. Berlin: Akadernie Verlag, 1957. 

Piaget, J. and Inhelder, B.  "Das symbolische Spiel." Das Kinderspiele. Texte, 
herausgegeben yon Andreas Flitner. München: R. Piper, Verlag, 1978. 130-
132. 

Sigsgaard, J. and Varnild, I. Det legede vi med. . . Gammelt legetøj i Danmark. 
 København: Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busck, 1982. 

Sutton-Smith, B. The Games of New Zealand Children. Folklore Studies no. 12. 
 Berkeley: U of California P, 1959. 

Scheuerl, H. "Alte und neue Spieltheorien." Das Kinderspiele. Texte, herausgegeben 
yon Andreas Flitner. München: R. Piper & Co., Verlag, 1973. 32-52. 

Stella, J. Games and Pastimes of Childhood. Trans. S. Applebaum. Illus. C.B. 
 Stella. New York-- Dover, 1969. 

37 



 
 

Books for Children 
Edith Fowke 

My best known children's book is Sallv Go Round the Sun: 300 
Songs. Rhvmes. and Games of Canadian Children (Toronto: 
McClelland & Stewart; New York: Doubleday, 1969). This is a 
large-size volume beautifully illustrated by Carlos Marchiori. It 
won the Canadian Association of Children's Librarians ' Award 
for the best book of the year, and it continues popular. All the 
items were from oral tradition, collected in 1958-1964 from 
Canadian children plus a few from adult friends who 
remembered them from their youth. 

I started collecting with some of the children on my own 
street and then began going to various Toronto schools where I 
arranged to tape the students in Grade 3 classes, which I found 
the best age-group for this type of material. I asked them for the 
games and rhymes they knew, and had no trouble getting a wide 
variety. Children's lore is probably the easiest kind of folklore to 
collect today. 

When I had assembled a number of tapes, I transcribed 
them, picked the best versions of the various items, arranged 
them in categories, and cited the sources and references to other 
versions. I was lucky in the artist whose delightful color 
illustrations made the book very attractive. He used two unusual 
techniques: many of his pictures included fingerprints, others 
looked like lace. 

This book is still in print, still popular, and still representa-
tive of the children's lore common in Canada. Students in my 
introductory folklore classes at York University collected 
children's rhymes and games as an annual assignment during the 
seventies and eighties, and found very few that were not in 
Sally. In 1989 Virginia Caputo, a graduate student in anthro-
pology at York, did her masters' thesis comparing the songs in 
my collection with those she collected in the same schools some 
twenty-five years later. An article on her study, which showed a 
remarkably close parallel, appeared in the Canadian Folk Music 
Journal for 1990. 

Keith MacMillan, who had transcribed the music, brought 
a group of children into a studio and recorded some of the songs 
and games. This was not a field recording, as the children had to 
be rehearsed: They knew the songs, but some of their versions 
were slightly different from those in Sallv, and Keith's piano or 
guitar accompaniments were used. However, it was children 
singing children's songs--an 

39 



 

Fowke 

improvement over most children's records which are sung by adults. Later, 
the record was replaced by a cassette. 

Partly because of the lovely illustrations and the record, Sally is much 
the best known of my books. At various gatherings parents still come up to 
tell me how much their children enjoy it, and many adults liked being 
reminded of their childhood. I was pleased to find that it was the only North 
American book on the reference list in the Opies' The Singing Game 
(Oxford: New York, 1984) except for Newell's Games and Songs of 
American Children from 1903. 

Jay Rahn, a leading Canadian ethnomusicologist, used my collection as 
the basis for an analysis of the tunes of children's songs, "Stereotyped Forms 
in English-Canadian Children's Songs: Historical and Pedalogical Aspects" in 
the 1981 Canadian Folk Music Journal. It compares the tunes in Sally with 
those of similar items in Britain and the States. This seems to be the first 
attempt to analyze English-language children's tunes. 

A sequel, Ring Around the Moon: 200 songs, tongue twisters, riddles. 
and rhvmes of Canadian children (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart; Engle-
wood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977), was designed for a slightly older 
group and contains some material for children rather than from children. 
Because of its smaller format and black-and-white illustrations, it proved less 
popular than Sally and was out of print for several years, but it has recently 
been reprinted (Toronto: NC Press, 1987). 

Both those books gave sources, comparative references, and indexes. A 
smaller and less scholarly book, Riot of Riddles (Richmond Hill, Ont: 
Scholastic-TAB, 1982), was published by one of the major companies selling 
to schools. It contains a wide variety of riddles and puzzles: true riddles, 
conundrums, riddle jokes, crossword puzzles, guessing games, etc. Of course 
riddles are tremendously popular among children; any group will gladly 
produce a number, and some make up their own. 

More recently, I assembled a book of children's street games. Red 
Rover. Red Rover (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1988). The material came 
largely from my students' assignments over a dozen years supplemented by 

some from Robert Cosbey, who had collected them from his folklore class at 
Regina University, Laurel Doucette, who sent some from an Ottawa class and 
some she remembered from her childhood, and Philip Thomas, who collected 
some in Vancouver, plus a few from Helen Creighton's collection in the 
Folklore Archives of the National Museum. 

Again I went through a voluminous mass of game descriptions, selected 
the best versions, organized them in the eleven classes use by Iona and Peter 
Opie in Children's Games in Street and Plavground (London: Oxford 
University Press, 1969), and added four extra sections: Pretending, Miscel-
laneous, Marble, and Word Games. When I told Iona what I was planning, 
she wrote: "I think it would be excellent if you used the analytical arrange 

40 



 

Booksfor Children 

ment of Children' Games in Street and Playground . . . I think Peter would 
be pleased. He was justifiably proud of his analysis, which caused him many 
skull-cracking hours." 

In addition to those books designed specifically for children, some of my 
others are also useful for children. One, published originally as Canada's Story in 
Song (Toronto: Gage, 1965), and long out of print, came out later in a new 
edition as Singing Our Historv (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1984). This 
began as a series of radio programs for which I wrote the scripts and 
Canadian folksinger Alan Mills narrated and sang the songs. All the songs 
are related to events and periods in our history, and we hoped it would be 
used in history and social studies classes. Alan recorded a two record set of 
the songs (Folkways 4000), and the New York Times listed it as one of the 
hundred best records of 1956. Singing Our Historv is a revised and enlarged 
edition, containing eighteen additional songs found since 1965. 

Another book that came out of a radio series, John D. Robins' Logging 
with Paul Bunvan, originally published in 1967 (Toronto: Ryerson), was 
reissued in a somewhat different format designed to appeal to children as 
Paul Bunvan. Superhero of the Lumberjacks (Toronto: NC Press, 1980). 
Dr. Robins, a professor at the University of Toronto, had worked in the 
northern woods where he heard many lumbering songs and stories. (Inci-
dentally, he was instrumental in getting me interested in folklore, and my 
first book was dedicated to him.) We had collaborated on a radio series 
about Paul Bunyan in which Dr. Robins, impersonating an old lumberjack, 
told the stories and I supplied songs from records. After Dr. Robins died, 
Mrs. Robins turned his manuscripts over to me; I edited them, adding an 
introduction and notes. When it had been out of print for several years, NC 
Press issued the revised version aiming at a children's market 

Folktales of Canada (Toronto: NC Press, 1979) has also been used with 
children, although it is not primarily for children. It is translations of varied 
French-Canadian tales (mostly from Marius Barbeau's collection) illustrating 
the different types of folktales. I did this book because most French-
Canadian tales available in English had been rewritten, and I kept my 
translations as close as possible to the original texts. 

My folksong anthologies, Folk Songs of Canada I and II (Waterloo: 
Waterloo Music, 1954, 1967), and The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk- 
Songs (Harrnsworth, England, 1973; rpt. Markham, Ont., 1986), while not 
designed for children, have been used in school music programs and at 
summer camps. 

Folk Songs of Canada, produced with a musician, Richard Johnston, 
was my first book. I began to realize the need for such a book as a result of 
my radio series, "Folk Song Time," which was then being aired on the 
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. When I played records of Canadian 

41 



 

Fowke 

songs, listeners would inquire where they could find them, but no general 
Canadian collection of folk songs existed, only regional collections from 
Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. 

We also produced a small volume of French-Canadian songs, Chansons 
de Ouebec/Folk Songs of Ouebec (Waterloo: Waterloo Music, 1957) with the 
original French and singable English translations, hoping to make the 
beautiful French-Canadian songs better known among Anglo-Canadians. 
Also, as singing French is much easier than speaking it, the book would be 
useful in teaching French to English-speaking children. 

Then in Canada's Centennial Year, 1967, we added the second volume, 
originally published as More Folk Song-s of Canada. It gave some less 
familiar songs and some from Ontario and Western Canada collected since 
1954. When working on the first book, we found practically no songs from 
west of Quebec, which led me to begin my own collecting. 

My other general anthology, The Penguin Book of Canadian Folk 
Songs, was prepared with the hope of making Canadian songs better known 
in Britain and the United States, and allowed me to present a substantial 
number of Ontario songs I had collected. 

Later I scripted The Audio-Visual Historv of Canadian Folk Music, 
issued by Mead Sound Filmstrips as a combined filmstrip and cassette for 
sale to schools. The Canadian singer Stan Rogers (tragically killed in a plane 
crash a few years later) narrated the script which was illustrated by short 
excerpts from songs and some well-chosen paintings and photographs. One 
delightful book I edited came from my friend Alice Kane, a children's 
librarian who supplied some of the items for Sally and Ring Around the Moon. She 
is a founder of The Storytellers' School of Toronto and the best storyteller in 
Canada. She has a phenomenal memory, and every time I saw her she would 
be quoting a song or a poem or a saying she remembered from her childhood. 
I kept telling her to write these down, they were folklore; eventually she did, 
but instead of simply writing the songs and rhymes, she quoted them as part 
of the story of her childhood years in Belfast, and gave me the manuscript as 
a Christmas present! I was so charmed by it that I arranged to have it printed 
as Songs and Savings of an Ulster Childhood (Toronto: McClelland & 
Stewart, 1983). This is a beautifully written narrative incorporating an 
astonishing wealth of folklore drawn from Alice's amazingly complete 
memory of her first twelve years in Ireland. I added an introduction, notes, 
comparative references, and bibliography. 

In 1985 I received the Vicky Metcalf Award of $2,000 "for a body of 
work inspirational to Canadian youth," a prize administered by the Canadian 
Authors Association. 

Toronto 

42 



 

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS 
The Children's Folklore Review is available only to members 
of the Children's Folklore Section of the American Folklore 
Society. To become a CFS member, send $10.00 yearly dues 
to Danielle Roemer, Literature and Language, Northern 
Kentucky University, Highland Heights, KY 41076. 

Round River Records is delighted to announce that three of its 
children's releases received Honorable Mentions at the NAIRD 
(National Association of Independent Record Distributors and 
Manufacturers) Convention awards ceremony held in Los 
Angeles in mid May. The awards were given to Bill Harley's 
Come on Out and Play and Grownups are Strange and to Sally 
Rogers' Piggyback Planet: Songs for a Whole Earth. Round 
River Records has received a variety of national awards for its 
ten releases of family music including several from NAIRD 
and the Parent's Choice Foundation. Debbie Block, President 
of Round River Records notes, "We are thrilled to receive this 
honor and vote of confidence from the Independent Record 
Industry . We are very proud of these recordings and are 
committed as ever to producing top quality releases that 
parents and kids can share." For further information, contact: 
Debbie Block, Round River Records, 301 Jacob Street, 
Seekonk, MA 02771. Phone: (508) 336-9703. 

The Goldfinch is a folklife magazine subtitled Iowa History 
for Young People and is published through the State Historical 
Society of Iowa. Unlike The Children's Folklore Review. The 
Goldfinch is written especially for young readers, but in such a 
way that older readers will find much of interest in it as well. 
Each volume focuses on folklore and folklife to show what life 
was like in Iowa and how life there has changed in the past 
century. For further information, contact: Deborah Gore, 
Editor, 402 Iowa Avenue, Iowa City, IA 52240. 

The H.W. Wilson Company announces the publication of 
Margaret Read MacDonald's Look Back and See: Twenty 
Lively Tales for Gentle Tellers. This collection of MacDonald's 
favorite stories includes tales from Native American, African 
European, Asian, Latin American, and Middle Eastern 
Traditions which are lively but non-violent. The tales are 
accompanied by substantial critical apparatus for the 
prospective story teller. 

43 



 

Notes and Announcements 

Wilson also announces the publication of Judy Sierra's Fantastic Theater, a 
collection of thirty plays for puppets based on the poetry, folk songs, fables, 
folktales, and myths of various cultures. Fantastic Theater also includes 
complete instructions for making puppets, puppet stages, props and scenery, 
and suggestions for music and sound effects. For further information, 
contact: Michael Page, Advertising Department, The H.W. Wilson Com-
pany, Bronx, NY 10452. 

44 



 

DIRECTORY OF MEMBERS 

Jean Day Alexander 
1425 4th St S.W. A415 
Washington, DC 20024 

Bill Ellis 
Pennsylvania State Univ. 
Hazleton Campus 
Highacres 
Hazleton, PA 18201 Caroline Feller Bauer 9696 

Quail Canyon Road El 
Cajon, CA 92021-6712 Gary Alan Fine 

Department of Sociology 
University of Georgia 
Athens, GA 30602 

Hannah Beiter 
77 Middle Road 
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 

Simon Bronner  
American Studies 
Penn State-Harrisburg 777 
West Harrisburg Pike 
Middleton, P A 17057 

Kathleen Forrest 453 
Wendell Terrace 
Syracuse, NY 13203 

Sean Galvin  
Brooklyn Arts Council 
200 East Parkway 
Brooklyn, NY 11238 Arnold E. Burkart  

704 E. Washington St. 
Muncia, IN 17057 Susan Gordon  

Sorehon Glen Assoc.  
4436 Jamesville Rd. 
Jamesville, MD 21754 

Pack Carnes 
23 Maplewood 
Lake Forest, IL 60045 

John Cech 
English Department 
University of Florida 
Gainesville, FL 32611 

Libby Tucker Gould 
136 Meeker Road 
Vestal, NY 13850 

Hope B. Connors 
4 Cantitoe Lane 
Englewood, CO 80110 

Sylvia Grider 
Anthropology Department 
Texas A & M University 
College Station, TX 77843 

Mary Gay Ducey 
2808 Hillegas 
Berkeley, CA 94705 

Eve Harwood 
710 W. Vermont Ave. 
Urbana, IL 61801 

Joseph Edgette 
509 Academy Ave. 
Glenolden, P A 19036 

Herbert Halpert 
Dept. of Folklore 
Memorial University St. 
John's Newfoundland AIC 
5S7 CANADA 

45 



 

Directory of Members 

Judith Haut 
2733 Halsey Road 
Topanga, CA 90290 

Bess Lomax Hawes  
3800 N. Fairfax Dr. #410 
Arlington, VA 22203 

Kay Hill 
167 Todd St. 
Harnden, CT 06518-1510 

Linda Hughes 
RD #2, Box 67 
Cochranville, PA 19330 

Ted Humphrey 
421 Baughman Ave. 
Claremont, CA 91711 

Thomas Johnson 
 Department of Anthropology 
California State University 
Chico, CA 95929-0400 

Marilyn Jorgensen  
8083 Caribbean Way 
Sacramento, CA 95826 

Catherine H. Kerst 
1107 Tiffany Road 
Silver Spring, MD 20904 

Kathy Kravits 
1028 Nordica Drive Los 
Angeles, CA 90065 

Tim Lloyd 
American Folklife Center 
Library of Congress 
Washington, DC 20540 

46 

Margaret MacDonald 
1507 NE lO4th 
Kirkland, WA 98033 

Amy MacDonald-Persons 
24 Cedarwood Drive 
Queensbury, NY 12804 

Jean M. MacLaughlin 
107 E. Dunedin Rd. 
Columbus, OH 43214 

Margy McClain 
1314 West Elmdale 
Chicago, IL 60660 

Virginia McKee 
68 Fisk: Street 
Providence, RI 02905-01414 

Priscilla Manwaring 
4040 Grand Ave. 
Bloomington, IN 47401 

Signe & Patricia Marton 
1114 E. Grove Street 
Bloomington, IL 61701 

Phyllis May-Machunda  
Multicultural Studies & Humanities 
Moorhead State Univ. 
Moorhead, MN 56560 

Alan Mays 
1212 Nissley Road 
Lancaster, PA 17601 

Jay Mechling  
American Studies 
822 Sproul Hall 
University of California 
Davis, CA 95616 



 

Directory of Members 

Richard E. Meyer 
Dept. of Humanities Western 
Oregon State College 
Monmouth, OR 97361 

Linda Morley 
308 Sagamore Street 
Manchester, NH 03104 

Priscilla A. Ord 
Department of English, Philosophy, 

and Modem Languages 
Longwood College 
Farmville, VA 23901 

Alison Patman 
844 Gretna Green Way 
Los Angeles, CA 90049 

Barbara Reed 
Old Quarry 
Guilford, CT 06437 

Rosalind L. Reichstein 
832 Asbury Terrace 
Philadelphia, PA 19126 

Danielle Roemer 
Language and Literature 
Northern Kentucky Univ. 
Highland Heights, KY 41076 

Jane Rose 
624 Village Blvd. N. 
Baldwinsville, NY 13027 

Joan Sauvageau 
 310B Horseshoe Drive 
Greenville, NC 27834 

Sandra Schector  
P.O. Box 366 
New York, NY 10185 

Kathleen Scholl 
Dept. of Elementary Ed. 
SUNY -New Paltz  
New Paltz, NY 12561 

Alvin Schwartz 
505 Prospect Ave. 
Princeton, NJ 08540 

Elizabeth Simons  
969 Hilldale Ave 
Berkeley, CA 94708 

Doris Smith 
338 South Road 
Bedford, MA 01730 

George Stromeyer  
Ascot Square 1603  
3850 Woodhaven Rd. 
Philadelphia, PA 19154 

Ruth Stotter 
2244 Vistazo E. 
Tiburon, CA 94920 

Brian Sutton-Smith 
612 Harwick Rd. 
Wayne, PA 19087 

Sally Anne Thompson  
7015 E. San Miguel 
Paradise Valley, AZ 85253 

Tad Tuleja 
c/o Nolen 
410 West Alpine Rd. 
Austin, TX 78704 

Elizabeth Wein 
5933 Wayne Ave #2R 
Philadelphia, PA 19144 

47 



 

Directory of Members 

INSTITUTIONS 

Association of Folklorists in the 
South 

Folk & Intercultural Studies 
Western Kentucky University 
Bowling Green, KY 42101 

Blue Ridge Institute Newsletter 
Ferrum College 
Ferrum, VA 24088 

Center for Folklore and Mythology 
University of California 
405 Hilgard Ave. 
Los Angeles, CA 90024-1459 

Central Serial Records University 
of Kentucky Libraries Lexington, 
KY 40506 

Cooper Library 
Serials Department 
Clemson University 
Clemson, SC 29631 

Folk Arts Coordinator 
Folklife Program Archive 
State Arts Council, Room 640 Jim 
Thorpe Building Oklahoma City, 
OK 73105-4987 

Folklore Archive 
448 Purdy Library 
Wayne State University 
Detroit, MI 48202 

Folklore Archives 
English Department 
University of Oregon 
Eugene, OR 97403 

48 

Folklore Archives 
English Department 
Utah State University 
Logan, UT 84322 

Folksong in the Classroom 
Laurence I. Seidman, Editor 
140 Hill Park Avenue Great 
Neck, NY 11021 

Gift & Exchange Division 
Library of Congress 
Washington, DC 20540 

Hesser College Library 
3 Sundial Ave. 
Manchester,NH 03103-7230 

Joseph C. Hickerson, Head 
Archive of Folk Culture 
Library of Congress 
Washington, DC 20540 

Indiana University Libraries 
Serials Department Indiana 
University Bloomington, IN 
47407 

Joyner Library 
East Carolina University 
Greenville, NC 27834 

Judith E. Lokenvitz 
Program Assistant 
Museum of International Folk Art 
P.O. Box 2087 
Santa Fe, NM 87504-2087 

Motif 
Department of English 
Ohio State University 
165 West 17th Ave 
Columbus, OH 43210 



 

Directory of Members 

New Jersey Folklore Newsletter 
P.O. Box 747 
New Brunswick, NJ 08903 

North Carolina Folklore Journal 
Applachian State University 
Boone, NC 28608 

Ralph Brown Draughton Library 
Serials Dept/LABW9561  
Mell Street 
Auburn University  
Auburn, AL 36849-3501 

Serials Librarian 
Country Music Foundation 
Library and Media Center 4 
Music Square East 
Nashville,TN 37203 

Judy Sierra 
Library/Info. Service  
One Washinton Square  
San Jose State University 
San Jose, CA 95192-0029 

State Documents Assistant 
Documents Unit 
J. Murrey Atkins Library 
UNC-Charlotte  
Charlotte, NC 28223 

The Museum 
Michigan State University East 
Lansing, MI 48824-1045 

Wheelock College Library 
132 Riverway 
Boston, MA 02215 

FOREIGN AND OVERSEAS 

June Factor 
P.O. Box 1063 
Ivanhoe 3079 
Victoria Australia 

Gwenda Davey  
13 Kambrook Rd. 
Caulfield 3161 
Victoria Australia 

University of Melbourne Library 
School of Early Childhood Studies 
Private Bag 1O/Kew 
Vic 3101 Australia 

Universiteitsbibliotheek-Kul Lvol 
Mgr. Ladeuzeplein 21 
B-3000 Leuven 
Belgium 

Canadian Museum of Civilization 
Library 
Asticou Centre Block 1600 
Ottawa, Ontario 
KIA OM8 Canada 

Carole H. Carpenter 
172 Roselawn Avenue 
Toronto, Ontario  
M4R 1E6 Canada 

Edith Fowke 
5 Notley Place 
Toronto, Ontario 
M4B 2M7 Canada 

Delf Hohmann 
Folklore/Memorial University 
St. John's, Newfoundland  
A1C 5S7 Canada 

49 



 

Directory of Members 

Paul Smith 
Folklore/Memorial Univ. 
St. Johns, Newfoundland 
AIC 5S7 Canada 

Danmarks Paedagogiske Bibliothek 
Tidsskriftafdelingen 
Lerso Parkalle 101 
DK-2100 Copenhagen 0 
Denmark 

Erik Kaas Nielsen 
Rypevaenget 16 
2600 Gelostrup 
DK Denmark 

Ruth Canonico-Webster 
15 Park Street  
Crediton, Dexon 
EX 17 3EQ England 

Iona Opie  
Westerfield House 
West Liss Hampshire 
GU33 6JQ England 

Stephen Roud 
18 Amberley Grove 
Addiscombe, Surrey 
CR06NO England 

Akateeminen Kirjakauppa 
Periodicals Department 
P.O. Box 128 
SF-00101 
Helsinki 10 Finland 

Helsingin Yliopisto 
Kansanrunoustiet Laitos 
Fabianinkatu 33 
SFD0100 Helksinki 17 
Finland 

50 

Library of the Society of Finnish 
Literature 

Hallitusk 
SF-00170, HKI 17 
Finland 

Osterbottens Traditionsarkiv 
Handelsesplanaden 23A  
SF-65100 Vasa 
Finland 

Andy Arleo 
Chemin du Bignon Baguet 
44600 Saint-Nazaire 
France 

Niedersaechische Staats-& 
Universitaets- Bibliothek 

Zugang II A-ZSS 
Prinzenstr. 1 
3400 Goettingen 
Germany 

Rainer Wehse  
Kapitan-Lechmann-Str. 6 
3400 Gottingen Germany 

Ase Enerstvedt  
Etn-Folkloristisk Instituit 
Olaf Ryesvei 19  
Postboks 23 
5014 Bergen-Universitet 
Norway 

Norsk Senter for Barneforskning 
v/ Bjerg Helgemo 
Universitet i Trondheim 
 N-7055 DRAGVOIL 
Norway 



 

Directory of Members 

Ivar Selmer-Olsen 
Donning Mauds Minne 
Hogskile for For 

Skolelaererutdanning 
Th. Owesengt. 18 N-
7044-TRONDHEIM 
Norway 

Christer Dominder 
 Homgatan 21B 
S-602 34 Norrkoping 
Sweden 

Bengt af Klintberg 
Vendevagen 13 
18131 Lidingo 
Sweden 

Per Peterson 
Timmermansgantan 6F 
S-753 33 Uppsala 
Sweden 

Dr. Maria Osorina 
Dept of General Psychology 
Leningrad State University 
Universitetskaya Nabereznaya 
Leningrad USSR 

Tecwyn Vaughan Jones 
Welsh Folk Museum St. 
Fagan's, Cardiff CF5 
6XB Wales 

Nic1as L. Walker, Librarian 
Welsh Folk Museum 
St. Fagans, Cardiff 
CF5 6XB Wales 

Menna Lloyd Williams 
Children's Literature Research 

Center 
Castell Brychan  
Aberystwyth 
SY232JB Wales 

51 



 

                                                 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

CFR will accept manuscripts on 3 1/2" disks if the manuscript 
was typed using Microsoft Word or MacWrite on a Macintosh 
computer. 

We request that, if possible, authors using typewriters or dot-
matrix printers have their manuscripts redone and a laser 
printed copy made. This will enable us to scan the copy, 
thereby eliminating rekeying the manuscript. 

Please send manuscripts to: 

C. W. Sullivan III, Editor 
Children's Folklore Review 
Department of English East 
Carolina University 
Greenville, NC 27858-4353 

Children's Folklore Review is published twice a year and sent 
to all members of the Children's Folklore Section of the 
American Folklore Society. 

Published by East Carolina University ISSN: 
0739-5558 Copyright @ 1991 Children's 

Folklore Section Printed by Morgan Printers, 
Inc. 


	Counting-Out