Want to Know More?
Robert McCarl, The District of Columbia Fire Fighters’ Project: A Case Study in Occupational Folklife (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).
Robert McCarl is one of the leading experts on occupational folklore, and this book, published by the Smithsonian, is a classic example of the study of workers’ folk culture. It’s amazing to learn how much there is to know about being a firefighter that has little to do with fighting fires—the true breadth of occupational folklore is featured here.
Archie Green, Only a Miner (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1972).
Archie Green, another leading scholar in the study of occupational folklore, presents the culture of coal miners through a consideration of their traditional working songs. Some are well-known tunes, some are esoteric and unfamiliar, but all of them reveal how the life of a miner can be captured uniquely in the expressive form of song.
Michael Owen Jones, “Why Folklore and Organization(s)?” Western Folklore 50 (January 1991): 29–40.
This article is one of the first to take on the question of occupational folklore in the office-based workplace, related to but distinct from the folk culture found in situations of manual labor. This study pushed the boundaries of this folk group to a new place. Business students should check this one out.
Religious Folk Groups
When it comes to religious belief, folklore gets really interesting (and tricky), for a variety of reasons. One, if you go around calling someone’s religious beliefs “folklore,” you’re asking for trouble, given the general misconception that folklore means “not true.” Two, it can be problematic to talk objectively about religious issues with anyone—folklorist or otherwise—who has his or her own personal faith. Between these two potential pitfalls, however, there’s a lot of fascinating stuff to be learned here.
What is religious folklore? Rather obviously, religious folklore is the stuff that emerges from a religious group but that isn’t determined by the institutional levels of the religion. A typical example of this is saints’ legends in Roman Catholicism. While much of saint lore is codified by the Catholic Church, there’s a lot that isn’t. Take, for example, the burying of a saint’s statue in your yard in order to force the answering of a prayer (St. Anthony for finding romance, St. Joseph for selling your home, etc.). The Catholic Church has never officially put this plan forward as a recommended course of action, but if you ask people why they did it, or why they believed it would work, they’d answer that it’s because they’re Catholic. It’s an element of noninstitutional (aka folk) religious belief.
Catholics aren’t the only ones who have noninstitutional aspects to their religious practice and belief. Muslims in need of luck or protection may seek out a marabout (a holy person, though the term can also refer to the tomb of a holy person) to procure an amulet or blessing, even though this practice is considered unorthodox. Contemporary Jewish people may similarly carry a talisman to protect against the evil eye. Practitioners of syncretic Vodun (Voodoo) traditions may create mojo bags to heal specific maladies or repel curses. Religious objects like these can run the gamut in meaning and use from kitschy tourist gift to sincere object of belief, and can even fill a role somewhere between the two.
We can see this multilayered meaning playing out at Shinto shrines in Japan. Shinto is the indigenous religion of Japan, and many of its practices constitute a folk religion, as there is no official governing institution for the belief system. Many Shinto shrines and temples will offer patrons paper fortunes called omikuji, which contain predictions of luck ranging from terrible to wonderful. It’s a common folk practice to tie one’s fortune to a tree or fence outside of the shrine, either to leave bad luck behind or to increase good luck. Tourists and locals get in on the tradition in equal measure, and the trees near some Shinto shrines end up nearly enveloped by the small pieces of paper. Knowing that this custom is performed by a range of people from a range of belief systems for a range of reasons, it is hard to generalize about the function and meaning of this particular custom. Individual believers have very personal relationships with both the institutional and folk aspects of their religions, and careful fieldwork is necessary to fully understand any instance of faith.
Fig. 4.1
There are also examples of folklore that aren’t actually about a religious topic but that emerge from within a religious folk group, and so become associated with that particular religion. Members of many faiths, for example, often associate certain foods with certain religious holidays, leading to an identification of the food with the religious celebration, even though there is no institutional requirement that that specific food be consumed during the event.8 Among Utah Mormons, there’s a popular side dish called “funeral potatoes”9 that takes this connection ever further. The potatoes themselves have no religious meaning (and they are served at nonfuneral events, too), but they’ve become a clear cultural marker of that particular religious group. If you were to ask people why they make funeral potatoes, or how that tradition became a part of their lives, they’d say that it’s because they’re Mormon, or because their families are Mormon.10
There are some terminological distinctions that can help clarify the difference between these two types of religion-based folklore. The term religious folklore applies generally to all the folklore, belief-oriented or otherwise, that is shared by a group united by religion (like funeral potatoes). The term folk religion, in contrast, is more often used to describe beliefs and practices that are religious in nature but not defined by the official dogma of the church or belief system (like saint burying). Sometimes you’ll find the two terms being used interchangeably,11 but it’s good to have the distinction in your mind.12
We also need to remember that people who do not identify with any institutional religious group may still have folk religion, even though there’s no official canon for their beliefs to exist alongside. People may have a belief in a deity or deities, in the existence of spirits or angels, or in the power of prayer, all without subscribing to any particular religious doctrine, and they may even have legends and memorates13 that support their beliefs, and customs that they share with other noninstitutionally spiritual people. Even the phrase “spiritual but not religious,” which is a new shared identifier for many people, is itself a form of folklore.
Considering that many people both leave and join religions in their lifetime, and that religious groups often overlap with regional groups, there’s also the possibility that people may be able to report on the folk religion or religious folklore of a group that they’re no longer a part of, or on a group that they’re culturally affiliated with but not religiously affiliated with. A student of mine once attempted a collection project with a local branch of the group known as the PostMormons,14 people who have left the Mormon religion and are seeking advice and companionship during their transition out of the religion. My student was very interested in what kinds of stories and beliefs this group would share—she quite reasonably expected that there would be a traditional batch of “Why I left” stories, stories that might share themes of doubt, disillusionment, or growing unease with the teachings of the church.
Interestingly, she found no such stories. What she did collect were a bunch of faith-promoting Mormon stories, legends that the group members recalled hearing back when they were active members of the Mormon Church. They were all stories that my student could have collected if the folk group she’d worked with had been current satisfied members of this religion, and yet they all came from a group specifically defined by its break from that religion. Clearly, while the PostMormon group members had left the Mormon religion, they were still quite embedded in the Mormon culture. And of course, while the legends themselves were the same, the intent behind the telling of them—the significance of the stories to the group and their function within it—were drastically different. Rather than being faith-promoting legends, they were viewed in this new context as falsehoods, perceived
as stories designed to blind followers to reasonable doubts and contradictions. This is an excellent example of the importance of context and texture to the meaning of a narrative; looking at the text alone could be extremely misleading when trying to discern what a legend might mean to its tellers.
Want to Know More?
Don Yoder, “Toward a Definition of Folk Religion,” Western Folklore 33 (January 1974): 2–15.
As indicated by the title, this article deals with the basic definition of “folk religion.” Yoder describes a range of historical attempts to define this field of study and brings aspects of them together in his own succinct definition.
Leonard Norman Primiano, “Vernacular Religion and the Search for Method in Religious Folklife,” Western Folklore 54 (January 1995): 37–56.
This article presents an important alternative view for the study of religious folklore. Primiano disagrees with the dichotomy of “institutional” and “folk” religion, believing that it overlooks too much and does a disservice to individual believers, within whom the reality of religious experience resides.
Dennis Covington, Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia (Philadelphia: Da Capo, 1995).
Written by a journalist who begins his investigation in a courtroom and ends up joining a snake-handling church, this book explores the nature of unconventional religious belief and conviction. It’s a great example of how mainstream and folk religious practices blend in an individual’s experience.
Campus Folk Groups
College campuses offer a wealth of folklore, and if we consider that one of the things folklore can do for a group is to offer social and psychological support and release during times of stress, then we see immediately why this is true. Consider some of the most enduring college legends: if your roommate dies, you get an automatic A in all your classes, right? What about that music major who died right before graduation—supposedly you can still hear her ghost playing the piano in the concert hall at night. Did you see that one test by the guy who gave an incredibly clever and creative answer to a question about thermodynamics by talking about how a girl told him she’d date him “when hell freezes over”? and got full credit, even though the answer was wrong? Or have you heard that if your professor doesn’t arrive within the first fifteen minutes of class, you’re legally allowed to leave and can’t be docked points?15 And wasn’t the library built upside down, or backward, or by two warring architect brothers who each designed half the building with no regard for matching what the other was doing? Say, did you hear about that one kid who totally openly cheated, and then stuck his bluebook in the middle of the stack and got an A because his professor didn’t know his name? Yeah, I’ve heard them all, too, as have thousands of college students across the country.
These legends sum up the myriad stresses that the average college student has to deal with on a regular basis. Social and emotional stresses seem nigh unbearable in the face of academic stress; it’s a relief to think that the extreme of the former (your roommate dying) would be softened with a removal of the latter (guaranteed straight As). Professors hold an enormous power over their students, and it’s satisfying to think that there’s a limitation on that power, or that students can outwit their professors and get the upper hand once in a while. Even without a story of warring architects, college campuses are often a hodge-podge of building styles and pathways—it’s nice to think it’s not that you can’t find your way, it’s that the campus is poorly designed.
Take this legend, for example: two college seniors decide to take a break from studying for finals and spend the weekend partying hard. Unfortunately, they party so hard that they oversleep Monday morning and miss their chemistry final. They agree on a story and approach their professor with their explanation: they had taken a trip over the weekend and got a flat tire on their way back. As they didn’t have a spare tire they had to wait for rescue and thus missed their final exam. Their professor takes pity on them and offers to write them a new final exam (since they could easily find out from classmates what had been on the original) and let then take it later that day. The two guys are thrilled with their success, but when they show up to take the final they’re presented with only one question, worth 100 percent of their grade: “Which tire was flat?”
This legend, told often about a specific professor at Duke University and purported to be at least partially true,16 has circulated since at least the late 1970s and has been set at a number of different colleges. So what’s so appealing about it? Well, it’s a nice tale of comeuppance, for one. These two cocky guys think they’re smarter than their professor, only to find out that he’s managed to outsmart them. While we might have expected their trickery to work in their favor, we instead get a reassuring message that the way we’ve been doing it—studying long and hard and showing up on time—is in fact the best path to success.
What about this one? Bored students in a psychology class decide to turn their professor’s own lectures against him by conducting an experiment in positive reinforcement and behavioral conditioning. They slowly begin to shape the professor’s actions by acting very attentive only when he does certain things, like stand on the left side of the room or puts a foot up on the trash can. Whenever he does anything else, they talk, fidget, and act uninterested. By the end of the semester, they’ve got the professor lecturing from on top of the trash can!
We get a totally different message here than we do from the story of the flat tire. In this scenario, the students win—not only do they manage to play a prank on their professor, but they’re actually illustrating how adept they are at employing the very concepts he’s supposedly an expert on. This is clearly an appealing idea to students—who wouldn’t want to believe this was possible? The scales are so regularly weighed in the faculty’s favor17 on a college campus—power over grades, over passing or failing, over recommendations, over internships, over enrollment—that it’s a relief to hear about a situation in which that power structure is overturned. In contrast to a system-supporting message in the first legend, we get a rebuttal to the norm in this one. Both together start to paint a picture of the nuanced issues being addressed and reflected by campus legends.
Whether it’s providing wish fulfillment or the articulation of an underlying anxiety, campus folklore clearly both reflects and helps to negotiate the college experience. Rites of passage are another of the most common ways this happens. Not only within fraternities and sororities—where initiation rites are at times infamous—but in many general campus populations there are traditions that allow for the fast and furious bonding that intense social and academic pressures require. When you meet your new dorm mates, you know that these people are going to be present for your most crazed cramming sessions, your most embarrassing emotional collapses, and your best parties. The sooner you can bond with them, the better. Many campuses have developed quasi-institutional customs that meet these needs, such as campuswide celebrations during the first week of school, Homecoming activities, pregame rallies, and dorm-specific theme parties. At other times, the students themselves develop customs in which the school officials play no part.18
Knowing the insider culture of a campus is in some ways similar to occupational folklore, in that students quickly learn the unofficial ways to navigate the institution. Sharing insider tips on getting into the most popular classes, learning how best to BS on a test you didn’t study for, knowing which areas of the library are the best for napping, where to go for the best parties, how to get the most food for your money from the cafeteria … when people look back on their college days, it’s often this stuff that they remember as much as (if not more than) the content of their classes. The folk culture of campus life is an enormous part of the overall college experience.
Want to Know More?
Simon Bronner, Piled Higher and Deeper: The Folklore of Campus Life (Little Rock, AR: August House, 1995).
Bronner brings together previous research and his
own fieldwork for this compilation of campus-specific folklore. He applies a range of approaches to understand the material, and it makes for a fun overview of student life.
Elizabeth Tucker, Campus Legends A Handbook (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2005).
This book goes beyond just legends (though it has a good number of those, too) to talk about all kinds of campus folklore. Tucker’s straightforward presentation offers ideas for analyzing and interpreting the folklore in the unique context of the academic setting, too, and her book serves as a great accessible example of folkloric analysis in general.
Children’s Folk Groups
Children’s folklore is awesome for one main reason: the population of this folk group is constantly changing, and yet the folklore it generates is some of the most consistent and long-lived folklore out there. It’s bizarre—considering that the people who qualify as “children”19 are changing every single year, you’d think that the folklore they share would be equally changeable. Nope. Not at all. Consider the fact that kids have been playing Ring around the Rosie20 and London Bridge21 for decades, if not centuries, and you get a sense of the longevity.
Another interesting thing about children’s folklore is that it’s one of the rare folk groups in which all adults have at one time been a member. An unfortunate result of this is that it’s very easy for adults to feel that they completely understand children’s culture, perhaps better than the children themselves do. This is an attitude that most people would never presume toward any other folk group; how patronizing it would be to look at members of another culture and claim to understand them better than they understand themselves!22 With children, however, that condescension seems more acceptable—they’re young, not yet fully developed mentally or physically, and so it’s not a true judgment of capability to say that adults know better. The problem is that while adults certainly were at one point members of the culture of childhood, they no longer are, and it can’t truly be said that the adult imagination is capable of genuinely recalling the experience of being a child, at least not in the way that a child perceives it. Folklorists need to be constantly reminding themselves that children are a unique, fully formed culture all on their own, and not simply unfinished adults.
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