Now, this is a very fine distinction, right? It wouldn’t take much to add in an element that would instantly transform this meaningful, nonfolk object into a meaningful folk object. Perhaps your brother decides he likes the gift so much that he’s going to start a collection of dog figurines. Every time he finds one, he’ll add it to the collection, and the family will quickly learn of his interest and start buying them as gifts for him, thus starting a pattern of creation. Or perhaps your brother begins a tradition of taking the dog with him whenever he travels for work, and reporting back to his son all the adventures the dog has while away, thus creating a pattern of use. Or perhaps your brother will wrap the small dog up in a giant, misleading box for Christmas and return it to his son, or pass it on to another family member, with the expectation that it will continue circulating through the family, thus creating a pattern of passing on. In these ways, the dog figurine could easily become a folk object.
As should be clear now, folk objects are different from the word-and action-based genres in several ways—the variation and repetition that we look for as markers of “folk” status don’t manifest in the same way, since objects have physical permanence in ways words and actions don’t. This lingering quality, while it may make it harder to witness dynamic variation, does offer a significant benefit. When someone finishes telling a story, it’s gone; when someone finishes using a piece of jewelry, compiling a collection of objects, or making a candy-wrapper chain, it remains. It may be dropped, perhaps considered lost, but it’s not gone. Material culture can exist separately from the people who create it, and that makes it an excellent record of the past.
Want to Know More?
Henry Glassie, Material Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).
This is a wonderful comprehensive approach to the study of material culture. Glassie covers the methods of material culture study and then provides examples of his own work to illustrate his ideas (and includes pictures!).
James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1977).
This book is written by a historical archaeologist who aims to illustrate how paying attention to everyday material culture can illuminate an understanding of the past. Especially useful to students of history, Deetz’s book covers everything from pottery remnants to vernacular architecture. You’ll never look at all the stuff in your house the same way again.
Michael Owen Jones, The Handmade Object and Its Maker (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975).
This book presents an interesting portrait of a single folk artist, a maker of Appalachian chairs, and his creations. It shows the depth of understanding that can be gained from a single, focused case study, and stands in contrast to the more comparative method that folklorists often employ.
Things We Believe
As I explained earlier, the category of things we believe overlaps with all the other forms of folklore quite regularly. As a discrete form of folklore, however, the phrase “folk belief” is commonly understood to refer to superstitions, legends,28 and beliefs about the supernatural. Now, there’s one very important thing to note at the outset of any discussion about folk belief, and that is that folklore can be true. It certainly isn’t always true, despite often being believed, but the classification of something as folklore does not mean that it’s specifically not true.
This is one of those preconceived notions that folklorists are constantly working against—“folklore” is a word that in common use is dismissive: “Oh, that’s just folklore!” Think back to what we said about legends just a few pages ago; they’re told as true, right? Well, some of them are true, and some of them aren’t.29 Whether they’re true or not isn’t the reason folklorists are interested in them; all folklorists care about is that they are shared among a group via word-of-mouth transmission, prompting us to ask why they remain popular. Rarely does the answer have to do with the literal truth or untruth of the story. So while it’s a popular pastime to test or try out various folk beliefs and legends,30 the final determination is mostly just an interesting side note next to the social and cultural forces within a group that keep a story, custom, or belief afloat.
For a long time in the history of folklore scholarship, supernatural folk beliefs were one of the forms of folklore that allowed scholars to see themselves as superior to “the folk”—clearly anyone who believed in such ridiculous things as good-luck charms, curses, fairies, ghosts, Bigfoot, vampires, werewolves, and the like were simply uneducated and deluded by the traditional beliefs of their equally misguided communities, right? Wrong, as it turns out. Just as we now understand that everyone is folk, we also understand that everyone—even scientists!—has folk beliefs. Whether they’re to do with luck, the supernatural, the nature of the universe, religion, or whatever, all people have folk components to their beliefs systems, components that work in tandem with their more official beliefs to create a functioning and complex system.
People often assume that as scientific understanding increases, folk belief in the supernatural will decrease. This seems to make sense—as we come to understand the scientific mechanisms behind natural phenomena, we’ll no longer need supernatural explanations—but this isn’t borne out in fact. Supernatural belief hasn’t declined much at all in the past century despite incredible advances in science, and as with all folklore, it’s the job of folklorists to show up and start asking why.
The field of folklore studies offers two alternative explanations for supernatural belief: the cultural source hypothesis and the experiential source hypothesis.31 According to the first, a person who subscribes to a particular supernatural belief does so because his or her culture has said that it’s true. In other words, if you grew up in a family or community or culture that tells you that Bigfoot roams around in the forest on the edge of town, then you’ll believe in Bigfoot. Perhaps in the woods one day you might imagine that you see a mysterious figure or hear a strange noise, and you’ll assume it’s Bigfoot, whom you’ve been culturally prepped to believe in.
The other option is that instead of culture being the source for a belief, actual experience is. Let’s consider Bigfoot again.32 If you have grown up never having believed in Bigfoot (or Sasquatch, or the Yeti, or the Skunk Ape), you may still find yourself, out in the woods one day, encountering or observing something that you can’t explain. You go through the possibilities: could I be hearing and seeing a regular kind of animal? Could I be disoriented somehow? Could I be mistaken? If you can’t find another explanation, you may conclude that you may have seen Bigfoot or, if you’ve never heard of Bigfoot, you may decide that you’ve seen some other creature that you have heard of, or perhaps an unnamed monster (and in that case, it might actually be more reassuring to be able to put a name like Bigfoot to it!).
The difference between these two hypotheses is clear: according to the first, the source of supernatural belief is cultural; according to the second, the source of supernatural belief is an actual experience. Often, there’s a bit of both in any given belief scenario—culture supplies the name “Bigfoot” and the expectation of that creature’s habitat and activities, while a genuine unexplainable sight, sound, or sensation leads to the application of that cultural info to a specific experience—but there are some important implications of both approaches that we need to be aware of.
For a long time, the cultural source hypothesis was all that folklorists had to work with; it was assumed that people believed in supernatural things because their culture told them to believe in them. While there is undeniably an element of culture in many supernatural beliefs, this unfortunately carries the implication that the people in question aren’t very smart—that they’re deluded or led astray by their traditional beliefs. Thus, the experiential source hypothesis has had a huge impact on folklore studies, for two main reasons. One, it shows that people who believe in supernatural things aren’t just dumb or deluded or crazy. Sometimes they are rationally
perceiving a real situation, even if their interpretation of that perception can’t be verified.
In addition to giving people some credit for being thoughtful and rational, the experiential source hypothesis also shows that sometimes folk beliefs are actually onto something—when a belief exists cross-culturally, and the sources of the beliefs are largely experiential, there may be a real thing happening. This has been borne out in a number of studies, most notably folklorist David Hufford’s work with the Old Hag tradition.33
There is a traditional belief in Newfoundland34 (and in other places, but Newfoundland is where Hufford started studying it) of a frightening creature called the Old Hag who comes into people’s rooms at night, slowly approaches the bed, and then sits either on the bed or on the person, crushing or suffocating them. Hufford interviewed lots of people who believe in this creature, and they reported that when they see the Old Hag they are definitely awake and not dreaming, and that they can’t move, they’re totally paralyzed. Only when they’re finally able to make even the slightest movement—twitching a finger, maybe—do they break free.
Now here’s the thing: Hufford started giving lectures on this Newfoundland folk belief at different universities and colleges, and it wasn’t long before students began coming up to him and saying thing like, “I’ve never heard of this Old Hag you’re talking about, but I’ve totally had that happen to me!” This is where we start to see that the cultural source hypothesis isn’t enough to explain this belief—how could someone who’d never heard of the Old Hag experience it? Hufford began interviewing tons more people, those who’d heard of the Old Hag and those who hadn’t, and found that an enormous number of people had had this terrifying experience. The ones who were familiar with the tradition could easily classify their experience, but those who had no cultural explanation simply filled in the blanks with their own interpretation of what had happened: demon attack, haunting, evil spirits, very realistic nightmare, and so on.
What Hufford found in the end is that people experiencing the Old Hag are experiencing a sleep disorder called “sleep paralysis with hypnagogic hallucinations.” And not only were his informants genuinely experiencing something, they were also describing it almost as accurately as modern medicine has been able to do, though some people were using cultural language rather than medical language.35 What can we take from this? That sometimes folk beliefs represent a rational, intelligent assessment of reality. While culture plays a role in belief, so does real experience. This is a far cry from the days of assuming that people believe in stuff because they are uneducated or simple.
The giant squid—once a legendary creature from sailors’ tales and now a marine museum curiosity—is another great example of the role that rational experience plays in the formation and propagation of supernatural beliefs. By listening to the stories of giant squid sightings, and by paying attention to the consistencies in timing, weather, and oceanic conditions, marine biologist Fredrick Aldrich was able to obtain fifteen specimens of a creature that many people thought didn’t actually exist.36 Clearly there is value in considering the possible experiential sources of folk beliefs.
Now, does this mean that every single folk belief is just waiting to be proven scientifically true at some later date? Probably not. But what it does mean is that we can’t dismiss these things, and we can’t assume that people who subscribe to supernatural beliefs are somehow less intelligent or less rational than others.
If you’re out in the world collecting folklore and you run into people who begin telling you stories of ghosts they’ve seen, aliens they’ve encountered, demonic possessions they’ve witnessed, or creatures they believe are living on the edges of their community, the single worst thing you can do is scoff at them. For one, it’s insulting, and folklorists should never be rude. But more than that, you stand to miss out on something really interesting. It’s very easy when you encounter supernatural folk beliefs to dismiss them, especially if you yourself aren’t inclined to believe in such things. But it’s imperative that you remember that people can be rational without being correct. You don’t need to agree with their conclusions about what they witnessed or experienced in order to accept that they may be accurately describing what they witnessed or experienced. They may use terminology that is specific to their cultural background, but that doesn’t mean that their culture is the only possible source for their belief.
Despite what many people think, few people jump to supernatural conclusions—it’s much more common that people consider natural or scientific explanations for unexplained events before deciding that it must have been supernatural. Giving your informants the benefit of the doubt that they are being rational, intelligent human beings is one of the best ways to approach the collection of supernatural folk beliefs.
You’ll probably also run into people who classify what they feel is “supernatural” in ways you don’t—many people who scoff at the notion of aliens and vampires may fully believe in ghosts and angels because in their perceptions those are aspects of religion, not the supernatural. It can take careful investigation to parse through an individual’s belief system. It also appears that when it comes to basic things like luck superstitions (you know the ones: black cats, ladders, mirrors, rabbits’ feet, etc.), humans may actually be hardwired to buy into them. Behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner (famed creator of the “Skinner Box,” aka the operant conditioning chamber) found that even the humble pigeon gives into the urge to re-create ritually a situation in which a random lucky occurrence happens.37 When researchers would randomly drop food on the pigeons, they’d observe the pigeons later attempting to re-create whatever it was they were doing when the food appeared, apparently in the hopes of making it appear again. Apply this to sports fans, and you’ve got the brain mechanism behind never washing your lucky socks, since your team won its first game when (and maybe because!) you were wearing them. I am not in any way intending to pejoratively connect sports fans to pigeons in psychological functioning—the fact is that we all give in to the desire to control the uncontrollable through traditional means. Even while our rational brains are scolding us for being ridiculous, many of us still find ourselves backing out from under ladders, knocking on wood, forwarding that chain letter, and tossing salt over our shoulders, just in case.
Want to Know More?
David J. Hufford, The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989).
This is an incredible illustration of the importance of paying serious attention to folk beliefs. Hufford’s work combines careful fieldwork with insightful interpretation, and is one of those books that makes you look at the supernatural in a different light. It also has lots of fun, scary stories about the Old Hag in it, so it’s an enjoyable read.
Wayland Hand, ed., Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina, vols. 6 and 7 of The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1964).
You may be able to find this collection only in the reference section of your library, but it’s worth the search. It’s a classic example of old-style folklore collecting: superstition after superstition, listed and numbered and (occasionally) attributed to a person or region. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn.
Diane Goldstein, Sylvia Grider, and Jeanie Banks Thomas, Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007).
With a focus on contemporary ghost beliefs, this readable collection of essays highlights the fact that supernatural belief is here to stay. Topics range from science to gender to haunted real estate (did you know that some states require you to alert buyers to the fact that your house may be haunted?).
Notes
1. William A. “Bert” Wilson first suggested this division. You can read more about it in his collected essays (The Marrow of Human Experience, ed. Jill Terry Rudy [Logan: Utah State University Press, 2006]). Return t
o text.
2. Remember the two-part job of a folklorist: to collect folklore and then to analyze it. This chapter offers some concise examples of this process. Return to text.
3. Folklorists prefer the term narratives, as it sounds more academic. Return to text.
4. So much so that these are often referred to as the “major” genres of folklore, while the shorter forms are the “minor” genres; this is not because the major one are more important, but simply because they’ve been studied more. Return to text.
5. An urban legend, or, as folklorists prefer, a contemporary legend, specifically. Return to text.
6. Folklorists have shortened “friend-of-a-friend” to FOAF. It’s a fun word. Return to text.
7. This version of AT 545B is highly abridged. And FYI, “AT” is short for “Aarne-Thompson,” an awe-inspiring classification system for folktales. Look for a book called The Types of the Folktale, and prepare to be impressed. And to start referring to stories by number. Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, FF Communications 75, no. 184 (Helsinki: Academia Scientarium Fennica, 1961). Return to text.
8. It’s very important to note that “told as true” is not the same as “believed to be true.” The legend derives its impact from being presented as literal truth, but that same presentation also invites doubt, questioning, and criticism. This is exactly what we’re supposed to do with legends; it’s folktales that we’re not meant to be skeptical of. Return to text.
9. At least when it comes to folk transmission. We don’t tell folktales orally to each other much anymore, but they’re incredibly popular subjects for books, film, and television these days. Return to text.
10. Aside from jokes, which we unfortunately don’t have space to address here. Return to text.
Folklore Rules Page 8
