Betsy was very proud of her ability to tell good scary stories, and she seemed
to work out elaborations in her sound effects as she went from tale to tale.
to work out elaborations in her sound effects as she went from tale to tale.
Childens - Folklore
'It floats!
It floats!
' And then the little girl was real scared, she said, 'What
floats? What floats? ' And he said, 'Ivory soap floats'" (Tucker 1977, 122-
123). From the reaction of the other children to Stacy's story, it seemed that
"It Floats" had lost some of its topical appeal since the time of my own camp-
ing experiences. There was not much laughter, and some of the children were
downright confused about the punchline; what did it matter if the soap
floated? In the 1950s and early 1960s, when the manufacturers of Ivory Soap
put the slogan "It floats" into a lot of their commercials, the story had much
more appeal. Today Ivory Soap is known for its purity and its history of being
passed down from mother to daughter (according to the television commer-
cials). As advertising changes, storytelling may undergo adaptations.
One noteworthy aspect of Stacy's story is the fact that the girl, not the
boy, has the courage to ask the disembodied voice, "What floats? " Even
though she is "real scared," she takes the risk of confronting the voice and
thus wins reassurance. We can see a close identification of the narrator with
the protagonist in this story and other variants, such as the one collected from
Jim, a ten-year-old boy, by John Vlach. In Jim's story three boys discover a
haunted house in the country; two of them get killed, and the third asks the
voice what floats (Vlach 1971, 101-02). Another contrast between Jim's story
and Stacy's is the absence of any real expression of fear in the former com-
pared to the fright in the latter. Since Jim is three years older than Stacy, he
can reel off a funny-scary story without any trepidations; and besides, admit-
ting to being scared seems less common in boys' funny-scary stories.
"It Floats" is just one of the many stories that belongs to the Aarne-
Thompson tale type 326, The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is.
The essence of this plot structure is a confrontation with a spooky, often
disembodied apparition; it may be a voice or some other kind of peculiar
noise, like rapping from a cupboard. The Grimms' tale that gives type 326
its name is about setting out to learn fear, with a silly conclusion to the quest:
The hero learns to shiver by having some slippery minnows poured down
his back (Magoun and Krappe 1960, 12-20). Not all variants of type 326
end with a shiver, but they all have to do with encountering the unknown
and getting control of one's own feelings. This process is exactly what the
funny-scary story is all about; the form of the ghost matters very little.
"Bloody Fingers," another very popular variant of type 326, some-
times has a victorious baby as its central character. Young narrators enjoy
identifying with this small hero, who responds to a ghost more bravely than
adults do. Sometimes the one who answers the ghost is a hippie, and other
times it is a teenager, a man, or a woman. As in "It Floats," the only noise
made by the ghost is a monotonously repeated phrase. The ominous wail
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? ? "Bloody Fingers! " may come from a bathroom, a basement, an attic, or a
telephone, depending on the whim of the storyteller. The punchline also has
many forms, from the polite "May I have a band-aid? " spoken by the ghost
himself in eight-and-a-half-year-old Jennifer's version (Tucker 1977, 268) to
the more cocky "Cool, man, cool. Go get a band-aid! " in the tale told by
ten-year-old Kenny (Vlach 1971, 100). All of these versions are united by a
simple goal: to have the ghost verbally put in its place by a person-usually
a very young person-who has complete control of the situation.
Perhaps the oldest and most beloved funny-scary story is "The Golden
Arm," a camp and slumber party classic. Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote
an essay about the delicacy of delivering this story's punchline at exactly the
right moment (Clemens 1897), and many other people have raved about its
shocking "jump ending" during the past century. When the story is told well,
the narrator grabs whoever is closest to him and shouts, "YOU GOT IT! "
"I GOTCHA! " or some such fitting phrase to make the climax complete. A
thorough bibliography of "Golden Arm" variants can be found in Sylvia
Grider's dissertation, "The Supernatural Narratives of Children" (Grider
1976, 557-83).
While "The Golden Arm" still flourishes as a frequently told story,
its climax is often mangled or misunderstood by child narrators. The main
development of the story is usually much the same, with a severed arm, a
golden replacement, and a ghost's walk to reclaim the arm after death. Ten-
year-old Patricia's version is characteristic: "Okay, this one about a golden
arm. There was this man and this woman, they got in a automobile acci-
dent, and this lady, they had to go to the hospital, and, um, they had to chop
her arm off, 'cause it looked like a, you could see her bones and everything,
they had to chop her arm off and they gave her a golden arm, and then when
they, when they went home, she died of some disease, and the man took the
arm off to remember her by. And every night she'd come back and say, 'I
want my golden arm, I want my golden arm,' and um, he got real scared. "
So far, so good, but Patricia finishes the story off with the surprising words
"he found her golden arm hanging up by a rope in the, um, garage" (Tucker
1977, 491-92). I have heard other children in the first few years of elemen-
tary school say a soft "I gotcha" without a grab, give a lame answer to the
ghost such as "I took it because I was gettin' poor," or simply give up in
despair: "I can't remember it! " This uncertainty may be attributable to weak
versions of the tale in circulation, or, more likely, to the difficulty that young
schoolchildren have with such an artful climax. Since "The Golden Arm"
is most popular among younger children, however, it can fall out of a child's
active repertoire before the punchline is ever properly mastered.
204 TALES AND LEGENDS
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? ? "The Golden Arm" ends differently from "Bloody Fingers" and the
others of that group, but it is still a bona fide funny-scary story. The jump
or grab at the end is not as immediately funny as a humorous retort, but it
is a splendid releaser of tension. The shout of "You got it! " defuses the sus-
pense generated by the story, and the foolish look on the face of the grabbed
victim is the stuff of which comedy is made. The story becomes a spoof rather
than a drama, and everyone present can enjoy being part of such a ridicu-
lous situation.
The tale type to which "The Golden Arm" belongs is Aarne-Thomp-
son 366, The Man from the Gallows. Its plot structure reflects an ancient
and well-entrenched taboo, the ban upon taking parts of a body from a
grave. Of course an arm of gold is not an organic part of a body, but in other
versions of type 366 the hero or heroine steals one or more real body parts
from a grave.
It is interesting that in most versions of "The Stolen Liver," the ghost
takes an extremely long time to reach the bed of the hapless grave-robber.
Suspense-building is one logical reason for this delay, but another one is the
need to establish some distance between the ghost's announcement of his
presence and the final pounce. Young storytellers need some preparation for
the shout, so that the ghost's arrival doesn't get too frightening. Without this
slow build-up, the tale would lose its reliability as a funny-scary story; in-
stead, it would be more like a seriously frightening legend. While some leg-
ends appear among the younger schoolchildren, funny-scary stories are much
more common and better loved.
UPPER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: TEN TO TWELVE
There is no clear-cut division between storytelling patterns in the early and
later years of elementary school; my inclusion of two stories from ten-year-
olds in the previous section makes that fact perfectly clear. Around the age
of ten, however, children begin to shift their focus from funny-scary tales to
legends that have no happy ending. Their mastery of the simple tales is well
established by the fifth grade, as is their ability to cope with fearful sensa-
tions in a controlled framework. It is time for them to explore less struc-
tured, more down-to-earth stories with variable and often shocking conclu-
sions-in other words, preadolescent legend. I have known nine-year-olds
who were already devoted to telling local legends and twelve-year-olds who
absolutely refused to hear anything frightening; in fact, some adults of my
acquaintance insist that they have always avoided scary movies, scary sto-
ries, and anything else remotely unsettling within the realm of entertainment.
Most children, however, develop an interest in the legend sometime in el-
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? ? ementary school. It would be hard for them to keep from being influenced
by this genre, as so much legend-telling occurs informally in groups of all
sizes.
One very popular legend is "The Fatal Initiation," which is told by
many boys-and some girls as well-in the preadolescent or early adoles-
cent years. Its plot concerns a test of endurance that takes place in a grave-
yard, haunted house, or other dangerous location; the initiate may get away
alive, but death and serious wounds are common results. Folklorists have
made some good progress in classifying and analyzing this legend (Baughman
1945; Knapp and Knapp 1976, 244). The Knapps' version, collected from
a boy, has to do with a boy being dared to stick a knife into a fresh grave;
when he does so, he finds that he can't leave because the knife has gone
through his own foot. This is a fairly mild consequence compared with the
mayhem and madness that occur in numerous other variants.
The idea of going to a scary place for the proof of one's courage and
skill seems to strike an especially responsive chord in boys who are begin-
ning to make the transition toward adolescence. Self-proving goes on
throughout adolescence and beyond, but it can seem especially perilous at
the point when adolescence begins. After all, nobody knows exactly what
the outcome of an initiatory test will be, and it is frightening to imagine the
worst possible results. Boys who feel great pressure to achieve may find par-
ticular significance in this kind of legendry.
Other legends frequently told by boys at camp include the numerous
stories of ghosts, monsters, and maniacs. Girls tell these stories, too, but the
boys' versions often show particular delight in the gruesome, bloody torture
of innocent victims. I am not sure why this difference exists, but a number
of girls have assured me that boys tell the really horrible camp stories. This
discrepancy should lessen in time, as women's liberation encourages girls to
express their less "ladylike" feelings. I have certainly collected some real
shockers from young female narrators, and I expect that girls' camp stories
will grow increasingly lurid as sex-role differences even out.
Jay Mechling shows in a chapter in this volume that camp is one of
the most favorable settings for children's folklore. Far from the familiar com-
forts of home, campers (especially first-timers) are likely to feel nervous and
alert to the hazards of being marooned in the woods. Every snapping twig
or flashing light may seem sinister at first-and counselors or older camp-
ers may fan the flames of this anxiety by telling ghost or monster legends.
Usually the story makes some direct reference to the camp and its location;
in other words, it is "told for true" and meant to be taken seriously by ev-
eryone but seasoned campers and counselors.
2o6 TALES AND LEGENDS
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? ? One such legend cycle described by James P. Leary (1973) concerns
the Boondocks Monster of Camp Wapehani in southern Indiana. This fear-
some creature, also known as Boondoggle or the Swamp Monster, is a big-
footed outer-space visitor that stays in the swamp and avoids dry areas. Boy
Scouts who wander away from the grounds may get caught by the monster,
according to the counselors-so the legend serves as a warning to obey the
rules and stay put. As Linda D6gh and Andrew VAzsonyi point out in "The
Dialectics of the Legend" (1976), social control is a very important func-
tion of this kind of story. Children who believe that a monster lurks nearby
are much more likely to accept their counselors' restrictions, unless, on oc-
casion, they join in an expedition to catch a glimpse of the monster in its
lair. Deliberate sensation-seeking is one of the special pleasures of camping
in the woods. If the counselor or camper in charge of the expedition is re-
ally enterprising, she or he can produce enough spooky lights, strange noises,
or sudden apparitions to send the more timorous campers scampering back
to their cabins.
Another memorable frightening figure is the Cropsey maniac of up-
state New York. Year after year, my children's folklore students at SUNY-
Binghamton have given graphic accounts of their exposure to this legend
cycle as young campers. Their spellings of the maniac's name range from
Cropsey to Kropsee, Kroppsy and even Crapsy; folk names that exist mainly
in oral tradition have infinitely variable spelling. Lee Haring and Mark
Breslerman have created a useful classificatory framework for the welter of
Cropsey variants (1977). Reduced to its basic components, the story tells
of an older, respected member of the community (a judge, businessman, or
guard at the camp) who loses one or more members of his family in an ac-
cident (fire, fall, or drowning) and swears to avenge himself by taking the
lives of nearby campers. Sometimes the camp has been negligent enough to
have had something to do with the family members' death, but often there
is no good reason for the oath of vengeance.
One especially vivid legend describes Cropsey as "a man with chalk-
white hair, red, bloodshot eyes, and swinging a long, bloody ax" (Haring
and Breslerman 1977, 15). In another variant, the body of a missing camper
is found with the name "Cropsey" burned into her arm (page 19). As with
the Boondocks Monster, it is clear that social control is an issue here; but
beyond fulfilling this function, the Cropsey legend leaves a lasting impres-
sion in the minds of those who hear it. This story of a father who goes ber-
serk and murders innocent children is especially horrifying because it reverses
the usual expectation that a parent will take care of his own and other chil-
dren. Campers who learn of his exploits are not likely to forget him.
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? ? Another frightening camp story is the subject of Bill Ellis's study
"'Ralph and Rudy': The Audience's Role in Re-creating a Camp Legend"
(1982). In this legend the central character, Ralph, becomes a wild man af-
ter cutting Rudy's head off and being splattered with his blood. Question-
ing whether this is folklore or "fakelore," Ellis concludes that the legend is
indeed folklore even though it was fabricated by counselors and perpetu-
ated by one teller. The key factor here is audience participation, which ex-
erts a significant control over the development of the story. Ellis widens the
usual interpretation of "traditionality" of children's folklore by adding the
audience's control of the performer to the criteria of history and content
(page 173).
While camp stories are told by both boys and girls, certain other leg-
ends tend to be for female listeners. One of these is "The Babysitter," a sup-
posedly true story that exists in several forms. Young girls who are begin-
ning to earn some extra money by babysitting tell stories of such disastrous
situations as this one, described by ten-year-old Jennifer in Johnson City, New
York: "There's one about this, like lady-she was babysittin' for these, um,
these twins and she kept gettin' obscene phone calls and the guy was up-
stairs givin' her the phone calls and, um, every time she talked he would
throw one of the twins out the window. That was in New York City or Long
Island, I'm not sure. "4 Compared with some other versions of "The
Babysitter," Jennifer's story is quite brief and minimally developed-but that
is one of the characteristic forms that the legend takes. This text gets the
point across just as well as a longer version with phone call dialogue,
screams, and gory mutilations. The point, of course, is that terrible things
can happen while a girl is babysitting; a man can get into the house, go af-
ter the children, and threaten the sitter's life as well.
The intense feeling of vulnerability that this legend conveys is an ex-
aggerated form of the insecurity many girls feel on their first babysitting
engagements. Being alone in a house with young children is a little like be-
ing off in the woods, with the important difference that the sitter is the one
in charge here. She has been entrusted with the welfare of the children un-
der her care, and anything that goes terribly wrong may be seen as her fault.
It is interesting that the "Babysitter" legends stress harm to the children,
rather than the sitter herself; the message is that responsibility for others is
what matters. In this way, girls learn that taking good care of young chil-
dren is one of their primary duties (boys' stories seldom deliver this mes-
sage). In some variants, the intruder says to the girl over the phone, "I've
got one of your kids and I'm going to get the other. " EveR though they are
not really her kids, the babysitter is learning to accept the role of mother-
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? ? in-training that society is offering to her.
Another kind of legend popular among girls in this age group is the
account of a horrible accident or near-accident that happens in the company
of a young man. "The Boyfriend's Death" is one shocking legend cycle (D6gh
1968a; Tucker 1976, 367-70). It tells of a boy and girl, or perhaps a man
and wife, who drive down a deserted road and run out of gas. The boy or
man goes off to get gas, and the girl or woman stays in the car. In ten-year-
old Betsy's version, collected in southern Indiana, the horror begins while
the woman is waiting: ". . . she heard a-something like "HREECH! " and
a drip and something, a THUMP. She looked out the window and started
screaming, 'cause her husband was hanging by the tree, and that "CLICK"
sound was his throat being cut, the "Drip-drop" was the blood falling on
the ground, and the THUMP was him banging against the car. " In Betsy's
story we see a clear demarcation of sex roles: The man ventures out to get
gas, and the woman sits passively and safely in the car. While the woman
herself escapes from harm, she has the terrible shock of discovering her hus-
band hanging from a tree, dead and bleeding profusely. The emotional con-
tent of this legend varies somewhat according to the main characters; if they
are a boy and girl, the fear of being alone with a boy in a deserted place
may be predominant. But in this case, where a husband and wife are the
characters, the strongest feeling seems to be survivor guilt: The woman has
stayed safe and let her husband do the dirty work, and now she has to live
with the shock of his horrible death. In either case, there is an emphasis on
human relationships and responsibilities-not very far in this respect from
the focus of "The Babysitter. "
It would not be fair to discuss Betsy's story without giving her credit
for her wonderful sound effects, the "HREECH" and "Drip-drop" and the
"THUMP. " All of these effects add a great deal to the dramatic impact of
the story; it is much easier to visualize the scene with the sounds included.
Betsy was very proud of her ability to tell good scary stories, and she seemed
to work out elaborations in her sound effects as she went from tale to tale.
A serious and hard-working girl, Betsy enjoyed a position of leadership
among her friends and got special recognition from them for her storytelling
abilities.
Telling frightening legends sometimes provides a kind of therapy for
children who are very ill. In her article "At a Children's Hospital: A Folk-
lore Survey," Roberta Krell (1980) explores how storytelling helps children
to come to terms with their illnesses. One story Krell includes concerns a
child who, forced to clean an attic floor as punishment, dies of loneliness
or asthma (page 229). Krell points out that "a child who faces his own death
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? ? every day because of illness may find it easier to handle that fact by telling
stories of other children who have died" (page 231). This area of research
offers considerable scope for understanding and helping older children who
suffer from serious illness.
The last legend that I want to discuss is "The Hook," a perennially
popular story told often by girls in upper elementary and junior high or
middle school. "The Hook" has been well scrutinized by folklorists (D6gh
1968b) and has been collected from all over the United States. Its plot is
simple and fairly consistent: a girl goes out parking with a boy to the local
Lovers' Lane, and a bulletin comes to them from the car radio: A danger-
ous man with a hook-hand has escaped from the insane asylum. Although
the boy wants to stay in Lovers' Lane, his girlfriend insists that he drive her
home. When he gets out to open the car door on her side, he sees a dread-
ful indication of what could have happened if they had stayed in Lovers'
Lane: a hook hanging from the door handle.
Alan Dundes has analyzed "The Hook" with emphasis upon its psy-
chosexual content, principally from the girl's point of view (1971). He states
that girls who go out parking with their boyfriends are afraid that the boys
will be "all hands"; they have to resist being overwhelmed by sexual ad-
vances, and calling a halt to the adventure is the easiest way to alleviate their
anxieties. The hook itself is a phallic symbol, a reminder of what the park-
ing excursion was really all about (page 30). While Dundes's points are well
taken, there are other observations that can be made. The girl in this leg-
end is timorous and safety-minded, like the girl or woman in "The
Boyfriend's Death"; she does not want to take the chance of doing some-
thing that might be life-threatening. The boy, on the other hand, is full of
confidence and sexual assertiveness. He leaves only at the girl's urging, of-
ten with resentful grumblings. We see the male figure as a self-assured and
somewhat reckless but ultimately protective person, while the female figure
is more anxious, careful, and protective of both herself and her boyfriend.
The female sense of responsibility has a good effect here, but we certainly
get the impression that taking risks and being reckless is more of a male pre-
rogative. "The Fatal Initiation" comes to mind again as a paradigm of young
men's adventurous risk-taking.
Legends, as well as the funny-scary tales, reworked folk tales, and
fantasies of earlier childhood, offer a fascinating set of opportunities to the
folklorist. Much work remains to be done in collecting, classifying, and ana-
lyzing these stories; it will be very interesting to see how social changes, es-
pecially alterations in sex roles, affect children's stories of the future.
210 TALES AND LEGENDS
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? ? NOTES TO CHAPTER NINE
1. Collected by Patricia J. Dailey in Binghamton, New York, on 1 May 1982.
2. Collected by Ann Dowling in Rochester, New York, 31 March 1978.
3. For a more thorough discussion of young children's need to protect them-
selves from serious fright, see Tucker 1981a.
4. Collected by Gail Cohen in Johnson City, New York, on 21 April 1979. Un-
less otherwise indicated, all other sample stories in this chapter come from my disser-
tation. I want to thank my student collectors, who have done such a fine job in their
work with child informants.
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? ?
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? ? IO TEASES AND PRANKS
Marilyn Jorgensen
INTRODUCTION
Writing about pranks and teases is an especially attractive task, possibly
because the study of these two particular forms of expressive activity bring
the researcher in such close contact with the child's delight in playful inter-
action and immense enthusiasm for living life to its fullest.
In the case of pranks (which I prefer to think of as tricks with little
degree of harm or mischief intended), the perpetrators have fun at the ex-
pense of the hurt or embarrassed victims, and the perpetrators of the pranks
are likely to have positive recollections of the deceptive behaviors in which
they have engaged. The victims of such pranks, however, might reasonably
be expected to try to forget as soon as possible because the victims of taunts
may be hurt and embarrassed.
The motivations for children's tricking and teasing victimizations can
be either benevolent (as in verbal abuse, or in tricks that may also involve
actions and objects) or of a harmful nature (as in verbal taunting, or in
pranks in which mischief is intended). But regardless of intentions or per-
ceptions involved in pranks, tricks, taunts, or teases, it is evident that these
traditional, prepackaged, and ready-made formulas for playful verbal and
kinesic interactions have been integral aspects of children's folklore for gen-
erations of children, a means of more fully experiencing and defining the
people in their lives and the world in which they live.
In this paper I will discuss taunts, teases, pranks, and tricks as forms
of victimization. Verbal teasing, as well as the more serious taunting of in-
dividuals, are behaviors that children are likely to experience at almost any
time and in any place. These activities occur most often at school in the class-
room, at the lunch table, or on the playground-and during play with friends
or siblings at home. Taunting (especially if socially unacceptable words or
taboos are involved) is usually not done in the presence of adult authori-
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? ? ties, but otherwise it is a fairly everyday type of occurrence. On the other
hand, tricks and pranks are distinguished from taunts and teases by the fact
that although they can and do occur in everyday situations, they also occur
on special, set-aside days when such forms of deception and victimization
are socially sanctioned and probably even expected.
In the sparse body of literature that does exist on children's trickery,
teasing, and related behaviors, there is no consensus with regard to termi-
nology, and terms like "teasing" and "tricking" are often used interchange-
ably. In addition, attempts such as that by Richard S. Tallman (1974, 269-
70) to differentiate between the goals of the practical joker (to fool the op-
ponent) and those of the trickster (to get something for nothing) seem too
limited in scope to be applicable to the many kinds of deceptive victimiza-
tions that exist in children's lore. Table 1 is designed as a beginning for the
identification of the kinds of behaviors and goals present in the four catego-
ries I will be discussing:
TABLE 1. Definitional Factors
Victimization Deception Benevolent Malicious
Taunt x
Tease x x
Prankxx x
Trick x x x
PRANKS AND TRICKS
The pranks and tricks favored by children are examples of what Erving
Goffman (1974) in his work on Frame Analysis has termed fabrications:
"The intentional effort of one or more individuals to manage activity so that
a party of one or more others will be induced to have a false belief about
what is going on" (page 83). The deceptive quality of the interactional be-
havior defined by Goffman as a fabrication is probably what makes pranks
and tricks so much fun-especially the thrill and excitement involved in an
adventure in which the success or failure of its outcome is at least partially
determined by one's own ability to perform. In addition, fabrications like
pranks and tricks are forms of children's lore that often are not entirely aban-
doned by youngsters as they progress through adolescence into adulthood
(Welsch 1974). Other forms of children's lore, such as nursery rhymes, jump-
rope rhymes, and rhymed taunts, are regularly discarded at crucial ages when
they come to be considered appropriate only for younger children. Pranks
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? ? and tricks continue to be popular through adolescence and even into adult-
hood. Thus, the kinds of pranks and tricks attempted and carried out may
change as one's age group changes, but not the enjoyment of engaging in
playful deceptions of different, possibly more sophisticated, kinds.
A review of the literature on the subject of pranks and tricks reveals
that very little attention has been devoted to the subject by folklorists, and
even less when only children's trickery is discussed separately from adult
behavior. In 1974, however, Southern Folklore Quarterly devoted an entire
issue to practical jokes in which Richard S. Tallman contributed an article
on the classification of practical jokes in terms of the actors and the actions
(in terms of nature, intent, and result) involved in the event, as well as the
dynamics of the related storytelling activities that sometimes occur afterward
as reminiscences. This same issue on practical jokes also contains a valuable
article by I. Sheldon Posen (1974a) on the traditional summer camp pranks
and practical jokes that children commonly engage in. In his analysis, Posen
focused on recurring themes found in the joking behavior he observed.
The following works also discuss schoolchildren's pranks and tricks:
The functions of tricking behavior for the schoolchild in the United States
are briefly explored by Mary and Herbert Knapp in One Potato, Two Po-
tato (1976, 91-100). The most popular pranks of British schoolchildren are
discussed in the last chapter of lona and Peter Opie's Lore and Language of
Schoolchildren (1959). Finnish schoolchildren's participation in the "deflat-
ing tradition" (or tricks at the expense of the unwitting) is discussed by Leea
Virtanen in chapter four of "Children's Lore" (1978, 51-58). Pranks (such
as raiding orchards and lighting fires) and named tricks (such as "Tick Tack,"
"Dummy Parcel," and "Ooh, My Toe") engaged in by children in school
and on the journey to and from school in different historical periods in New
Zealand are presented in Brian Sutton-Smith's comprehensive work A His-
tory of Children's Play: The New Zealand Playground, 1840-50 (1981la, 90-
91). The aspects of dissemination and regional variation of terminology in
the preadolescent boys' prank the "wedge" are briefly discussed by Gary
Alan Fine in the Center for Southern Folklore Magazine in its special issue
on children's folklore (1980d, 9).
Very little analytical work on the forms and functions of children's
pranks and tricks has been done, but Leea Virtanen (1978) has made ob-
servations with regard to various factors common to the "deflating tradi-
tion," such as the utilization of linguistic ambiguity in the construction of
verbal tricks and the social-interactional dynamics involved in "getting the
victim to fall into a trap of his own making" (page 53), in which the result
of the verbal deception is making a fool of oneself. Virtanen gives several
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? ? examples of such verbal deception, such as "Spot and Spit were fighting, who
won? If the other says 'Spit,' you spit on him" (page 53). The observations
made by Virtanen with regard to the use of verbal ambiguity and getting
the victim to fall into a trap of which he himself has participated in the mak-
ing, are common to many forms of children's lore, such as catch routines,
knock-knock jokes, riddles, and phone tricks.
Phone tricks, for example, all seem to share a common denomina-
tor: They are all fabrications that rely on ambiguity. This ambiguity exists
at several levels (Jorgensen 1984, 104-16). Perhaps the most apparent use
of ambiguity is with reference to speech play, or the ambiguity of words
(puns, homonyms, and so forth) that allows for the possibility of everyday
speech to be manipulated for fun and humor. A second level of ambiguity
is a kind of social-interactional ambiguity whereby the identity of the caller
may not be known to the victim. The use of the phone almost guarantees
that the identities of the individuals remain unknown. This ambiguity of
identity makes it quite easy for youngsters to engage in phone tricks and to
do the exasperating things that they would be highly unlikely to do in other,
less safe circumstances. The use of the telephone affords them an anonym-
ity that allows for a certain license to participate in this kind of trickery, rela-
tively free from the fear of the retribution or embarrassment that might oc-
cur in face-to-face settings (Jorgensen 1984). The last kind of ambiguity exists
at the level of social structure and is related to the position of the teenager
in the hierarchy of the social order. The adolescent in our society is in an
ambiguous period in his life, being neither child nor adult.
These phone tricks may be viewed as occurring at an ambiguous time
in the life of the caller, taking place in an ambiguous social-interactional set-
ting (because of the use of the phone), and sometimes utilizing the ambigu-
ous quality of words in order to play with everyday speech, to demonstrate
communicative competence, and to gain a sense of personal power (espe-
cially within the peer group). Phone tricks are just one example of the pranks
common to children's folklore.
Some of these behaviors are reserved for "special occasions. " In the
United States the two main times of the year historically set aside for the
playing of pranks and tricks are Halloween and April Fools' Day. The same
two days are set aside in the British Isles, with the addition of Mischief Night
on November 4 (the eve of Guy Fawkes Day), which is considered by lona
and Peter Opie (1959) to be a postponed celebration of Halloween. Mis-
chievous or impolite and disrespectful behavior by children on special days
of the year may be viewed as a reversal of everyday norms of polite behav-
ior and it is allowed to some extent or perhaps even anticipated. As long as
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? ? the tricksters and pranksters don't go too far-as long as their actions do
not injure anyone or cause great damage to property or life-the mischief
is usually excused. On some other day of the year it might not be. On Hal-
loween, as well as on Mischief Night in England, the behavioral reversals
tend to involve children and teenagers as initiators of unsociable acts aimed
either at peers, adults, or other authority figures, but on April Fools' Day
adults tend to join the children as the initiators of pranks and tricks. Many
of the traditional April Fools' tricks, such as the "fool's errand," involve face-
to-face interaction between the trickster and the victim, but most of the
Halloween pranks (which are often directed against personal property) oc-
cur under the cover of darkness: The pranksters are usually unseen and un-
known.
The unknown identity of the Halloween prankster is, of course, a
safeguard against retribution by the irate victim. The prankster's unsociable
and harmful behavior, however, is also reminiscent of the traditional behavior
associated with ancestors, ghosts, or other spirit powers, who are given free
rein to return to earth and cause trouble or play tricks on the living once a
year. Such practices are known in many widely separated cultures through-
out the world-from the Druidic celebration of Samhuin on the eve of 1
November to the Day of the Dead in Mexico, and even the Milamala har-
vest celebration reported by Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands (1954).
Some very creative and innovative pranks perpetrated by teenagers in New
York in the early 1970s are reported in an article published by Catherine
Harris Ainsworth entitled "Hallowe'en," which appeared in September of
1973 in the New York Folklore Quarterly. The following excerpts are from
essays on the topic of the celebration of Halloween, perceived and experi-
enced by 18- and 19-year-olds, and they illustrate some important points
about the social interactions and reversals of everyday polite behavior that
are associated with October 31 in our culture. Most of the teenagers who
chose to include reports of pranks they had played in their essays were boys,
although one young lady did mention briefly that she enjoyed tipping over
mailboxes and causing trouble by scaring people. Interestingly, one of the
best accounts (in terms of the most detailed recording of socially unaccept-
able behavior) was signed "anonymous," which is of course symbolic of the
social-interactional significance of this special night with regard to the prank-
ish behavior perpetrated by "unseen spirits of the night":
To start the night rolling we would soap a few windows and rap on
them when the people would be watching television. Next we found
a tree limb that grew over the road. A couple of us would climb up
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? ? and tie a dummy on a rope. As soon as a car was almost under the
tree, they swung the dummy right down in front of it. They would
either stop and get out and start cussing or just slow down and keep
going. (pages 180-81)
I remember Hallowe'en because that's the night the fire company was
called out to quench a blaze that measured a few inches in width but
stretched over two miles down the center of our local main road. It
was also the night the police received several complaints from irate
motorists who'd been shocked out of their pants when someone
dropped a very life-like looking dummy in front of their car. But as
the years passed, we became more mature, which is another way of
saying our plans became more devious, more daring, and more imagi-
native. Ours was the first town with a psychedelic cop car. It was also
the first with a stop and go light that turned green in all four direc-
tions at the same time. (pages 183-84)
Halloween is a night of mischief for all, not only for young children,
but also for the older teenagers. On the way to my friend's house I
paid a visit to a few of my neighbors. After receiving dirty looks from
them all year I thought it was an appropriate time to harass them.
So I broke a few of their pumpkins. I picked up my friends and we
headed out toward Main Street . .
floats? What floats? ' And he said, 'Ivory soap floats'" (Tucker 1977, 122-
123). From the reaction of the other children to Stacy's story, it seemed that
"It Floats" had lost some of its topical appeal since the time of my own camp-
ing experiences. There was not much laughter, and some of the children were
downright confused about the punchline; what did it matter if the soap
floated? In the 1950s and early 1960s, when the manufacturers of Ivory Soap
put the slogan "It floats" into a lot of their commercials, the story had much
more appeal. Today Ivory Soap is known for its purity and its history of being
passed down from mother to daughter (according to the television commer-
cials). As advertising changes, storytelling may undergo adaptations.
One noteworthy aspect of Stacy's story is the fact that the girl, not the
boy, has the courage to ask the disembodied voice, "What floats? " Even
though she is "real scared," she takes the risk of confronting the voice and
thus wins reassurance. We can see a close identification of the narrator with
the protagonist in this story and other variants, such as the one collected from
Jim, a ten-year-old boy, by John Vlach. In Jim's story three boys discover a
haunted house in the country; two of them get killed, and the third asks the
voice what floats (Vlach 1971, 101-02). Another contrast between Jim's story
and Stacy's is the absence of any real expression of fear in the former com-
pared to the fright in the latter. Since Jim is three years older than Stacy, he
can reel off a funny-scary story without any trepidations; and besides, admit-
ting to being scared seems less common in boys' funny-scary stories.
"It Floats" is just one of the many stories that belongs to the Aarne-
Thompson tale type 326, The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is.
The essence of this plot structure is a confrontation with a spooky, often
disembodied apparition; it may be a voice or some other kind of peculiar
noise, like rapping from a cupboard. The Grimms' tale that gives type 326
its name is about setting out to learn fear, with a silly conclusion to the quest:
The hero learns to shiver by having some slippery minnows poured down
his back (Magoun and Krappe 1960, 12-20). Not all variants of type 326
end with a shiver, but they all have to do with encountering the unknown
and getting control of one's own feelings. This process is exactly what the
funny-scary story is all about; the form of the ghost matters very little.
"Bloody Fingers," another very popular variant of type 326, some-
times has a victorious baby as its central character. Young narrators enjoy
identifying with this small hero, who responds to a ghost more bravely than
adults do. Sometimes the one who answers the ghost is a hippie, and other
times it is a teenager, a man, or a woman. As in "It Floats," the only noise
made by the ghost is a monotonously repeated phrase. The ominous wail
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? ? "Bloody Fingers! " may come from a bathroom, a basement, an attic, or a
telephone, depending on the whim of the storyteller. The punchline also has
many forms, from the polite "May I have a band-aid? " spoken by the ghost
himself in eight-and-a-half-year-old Jennifer's version (Tucker 1977, 268) to
the more cocky "Cool, man, cool. Go get a band-aid! " in the tale told by
ten-year-old Kenny (Vlach 1971, 100). All of these versions are united by a
simple goal: to have the ghost verbally put in its place by a person-usually
a very young person-who has complete control of the situation.
Perhaps the oldest and most beloved funny-scary story is "The Golden
Arm," a camp and slumber party classic. Samuel Langhorne Clemens wrote
an essay about the delicacy of delivering this story's punchline at exactly the
right moment (Clemens 1897), and many other people have raved about its
shocking "jump ending" during the past century. When the story is told well,
the narrator grabs whoever is closest to him and shouts, "YOU GOT IT! "
"I GOTCHA! " or some such fitting phrase to make the climax complete. A
thorough bibliography of "Golden Arm" variants can be found in Sylvia
Grider's dissertation, "The Supernatural Narratives of Children" (Grider
1976, 557-83).
While "The Golden Arm" still flourishes as a frequently told story,
its climax is often mangled or misunderstood by child narrators. The main
development of the story is usually much the same, with a severed arm, a
golden replacement, and a ghost's walk to reclaim the arm after death. Ten-
year-old Patricia's version is characteristic: "Okay, this one about a golden
arm. There was this man and this woman, they got in a automobile acci-
dent, and this lady, they had to go to the hospital, and, um, they had to chop
her arm off, 'cause it looked like a, you could see her bones and everything,
they had to chop her arm off and they gave her a golden arm, and then when
they, when they went home, she died of some disease, and the man took the
arm off to remember her by. And every night she'd come back and say, 'I
want my golden arm, I want my golden arm,' and um, he got real scared. "
So far, so good, but Patricia finishes the story off with the surprising words
"he found her golden arm hanging up by a rope in the, um, garage" (Tucker
1977, 491-92). I have heard other children in the first few years of elemen-
tary school say a soft "I gotcha" without a grab, give a lame answer to the
ghost such as "I took it because I was gettin' poor," or simply give up in
despair: "I can't remember it! " This uncertainty may be attributable to weak
versions of the tale in circulation, or, more likely, to the difficulty that young
schoolchildren have with such an artful climax. Since "The Golden Arm"
is most popular among younger children, however, it can fall out of a child's
active repertoire before the punchline is ever properly mastered.
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? ? "The Golden Arm" ends differently from "Bloody Fingers" and the
others of that group, but it is still a bona fide funny-scary story. The jump
or grab at the end is not as immediately funny as a humorous retort, but it
is a splendid releaser of tension. The shout of "You got it! " defuses the sus-
pense generated by the story, and the foolish look on the face of the grabbed
victim is the stuff of which comedy is made. The story becomes a spoof rather
than a drama, and everyone present can enjoy being part of such a ridicu-
lous situation.
The tale type to which "The Golden Arm" belongs is Aarne-Thomp-
son 366, The Man from the Gallows. Its plot structure reflects an ancient
and well-entrenched taboo, the ban upon taking parts of a body from a
grave. Of course an arm of gold is not an organic part of a body, but in other
versions of type 366 the hero or heroine steals one or more real body parts
from a grave.
It is interesting that in most versions of "The Stolen Liver," the ghost
takes an extremely long time to reach the bed of the hapless grave-robber.
Suspense-building is one logical reason for this delay, but another one is the
need to establish some distance between the ghost's announcement of his
presence and the final pounce. Young storytellers need some preparation for
the shout, so that the ghost's arrival doesn't get too frightening. Without this
slow build-up, the tale would lose its reliability as a funny-scary story; in-
stead, it would be more like a seriously frightening legend. While some leg-
ends appear among the younger schoolchildren, funny-scary stories are much
more common and better loved.
UPPER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: TEN TO TWELVE
There is no clear-cut division between storytelling patterns in the early and
later years of elementary school; my inclusion of two stories from ten-year-
olds in the previous section makes that fact perfectly clear. Around the age
of ten, however, children begin to shift their focus from funny-scary tales to
legends that have no happy ending. Their mastery of the simple tales is well
established by the fifth grade, as is their ability to cope with fearful sensa-
tions in a controlled framework. It is time for them to explore less struc-
tured, more down-to-earth stories with variable and often shocking conclu-
sions-in other words, preadolescent legend. I have known nine-year-olds
who were already devoted to telling local legends and twelve-year-olds who
absolutely refused to hear anything frightening; in fact, some adults of my
acquaintance insist that they have always avoided scary movies, scary sto-
ries, and anything else remotely unsettling within the realm of entertainment.
Most children, however, develop an interest in the legend sometime in el-
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? ? ementary school. It would be hard for them to keep from being influenced
by this genre, as so much legend-telling occurs informally in groups of all
sizes.
One very popular legend is "The Fatal Initiation," which is told by
many boys-and some girls as well-in the preadolescent or early adoles-
cent years. Its plot concerns a test of endurance that takes place in a grave-
yard, haunted house, or other dangerous location; the initiate may get away
alive, but death and serious wounds are common results. Folklorists have
made some good progress in classifying and analyzing this legend (Baughman
1945; Knapp and Knapp 1976, 244). The Knapps' version, collected from
a boy, has to do with a boy being dared to stick a knife into a fresh grave;
when he does so, he finds that he can't leave because the knife has gone
through his own foot. This is a fairly mild consequence compared with the
mayhem and madness that occur in numerous other variants.
The idea of going to a scary place for the proof of one's courage and
skill seems to strike an especially responsive chord in boys who are begin-
ning to make the transition toward adolescence. Self-proving goes on
throughout adolescence and beyond, but it can seem especially perilous at
the point when adolescence begins. After all, nobody knows exactly what
the outcome of an initiatory test will be, and it is frightening to imagine the
worst possible results. Boys who feel great pressure to achieve may find par-
ticular significance in this kind of legendry.
Other legends frequently told by boys at camp include the numerous
stories of ghosts, monsters, and maniacs. Girls tell these stories, too, but the
boys' versions often show particular delight in the gruesome, bloody torture
of innocent victims. I am not sure why this difference exists, but a number
of girls have assured me that boys tell the really horrible camp stories. This
discrepancy should lessen in time, as women's liberation encourages girls to
express their less "ladylike" feelings. I have certainly collected some real
shockers from young female narrators, and I expect that girls' camp stories
will grow increasingly lurid as sex-role differences even out.
Jay Mechling shows in a chapter in this volume that camp is one of
the most favorable settings for children's folklore. Far from the familiar com-
forts of home, campers (especially first-timers) are likely to feel nervous and
alert to the hazards of being marooned in the woods. Every snapping twig
or flashing light may seem sinister at first-and counselors or older camp-
ers may fan the flames of this anxiety by telling ghost or monster legends.
Usually the story makes some direct reference to the camp and its location;
in other words, it is "told for true" and meant to be taken seriously by ev-
eryone but seasoned campers and counselors.
2o6 TALES AND LEGENDS
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? ? One such legend cycle described by James P. Leary (1973) concerns
the Boondocks Monster of Camp Wapehani in southern Indiana. This fear-
some creature, also known as Boondoggle or the Swamp Monster, is a big-
footed outer-space visitor that stays in the swamp and avoids dry areas. Boy
Scouts who wander away from the grounds may get caught by the monster,
according to the counselors-so the legend serves as a warning to obey the
rules and stay put. As Linda D6gh and Andrew VAzsonyi point out in "The
Dialectics of the Legend" (1976), social control is a very important func-
tion of this kind of story. Children who believe that a monster lurks nearby
are much more likely to accept their counselors' restrictions, unless, on oc-
casion, they join in an expedition to catch a glimpse of the monster in its
lair. Deliberate sensation-seeking is one of the special pleasures of camping
in the woods. If the counselor or camper in charge of the expedition is re-
ally enterprising, she or he can produce enough spooky lights, strange noises,
or sudden apparitions to send the more timorous campers scampering back
to their cabins.
Another memorable frightening figure is the Cropsey maniac of up-
state New York. Year after year, my children's folklore students at SUNY-
Binghamton have given graphic accounts of their exposure to this legend
cycle as young campers. Their spellings of the maniac's name range from
Cropsey to Kropsee, Kroppsy and even Crapsy; folk names that exist mainly
in oral tradition have infinitely variable spelling. Lee Haring and Mark
Breslerman have created a useful classificatory framework for the welter of
Cropsey variants (1977). Reduced to its basic components, the story tells
of an older, respected member of the community (a judge, businessman, or
guard at the camp) who loses one or more members of his family in an ac-
cident (fire, fall, or drowning) and swears to avenge himself by taking the
lives of nearby campers. Sometimes the camp has been negligent enough to
have had something to do with the family members' death, but often there
is no good reason for the oath of vengeance.
One especially vivid legend describes Cropsey as "a man with chalk-
white hair, red, bloodshot eyes, and swinging a long, bloody ax" (Haring
and Breslerman 1977, 15). In another variant, the body of a missing camper
is found with the name "Cropsey" burned into her arm (page 19). As with
the Boondocks Monster, it is clear that social control is an issue here; but
beyond fulfilling this function, the Cropsey legend leaves a lasting impres-
sion in the minds of those who hear it. This story of a father who goes ber-
serk and murders innocent children is especially horrifying because it reverses
the usual expectation that a parent will take care of his own and other chil-
dren. Campers who learn of his exploits are not likely to forget him.
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? ? Another frightening camp story is the subject of Bill Ellis's study
"'Ralph and Rudy': The Audience's Role in Re-creating a Camp Legend"
(1982). In this legend the central character, Ralph, becomes a wild man af-
ter cutting Rudy's head off and being splattered with his blood. Question-
ing whether this is folklore or "fakelore," Ellis concludes that the legend is
indeed folklore even though it was fabricated by counselors and perpetu-
ated by one teller. The key factor here is audience participation, which ex-
erts a significant control over the development of the story. Ellis widens the
usual interpretation of "traditionality" of children's folklore by adding the
audience's control of the performer to the criteria of history and content
(page 173).
While camp stories are told by both boys and girls, certain other leg-
ends tend to be for female listeners. One of these is "The Babysitter," a sup-
posedly true story that exists in several forms. Young girls who are begin-
ning to earn some extra money by babysitting tell stories of such disastrous
situations as this one, described by ten-year-old Jennifer in Johnson City, New
York: "There's one about this, like lady-she was babysittin' for these, um,
these twins and she kept gettin' obscene phone calls and the guy was up-
stairs givin' her the phone calls and, um, every time she talked he would
throw one of the twins out the window. That was in New York City or Long
Island, I'm not sure. "4 Compared with some other versions of "The
Babysitter," Jennifer's story is quite brief and minimally developed-but that
is one of the characteristic forms that the legend takes. This text gets the
point across just as well as a longer version with phone call dialogue,
screams, and gory mutilations. The point, of course, is that terrible things
can happen while a girl is babysitting; a man can get into the house, go af-
ter the children, and threaten the sitter's life as well.
The intense feeling of vulnerability that this legend conveys is an ex-
aggerated form of the insecurity many girls feel on their first babysitting
engagements. Being alone in a house with young children is a little like be-
ing off in the woods, with the important difference that the sitter is the one
in charge here. She has been entrusted with the welfare of the children un-
der her care, and anything that goes terribly wrong may be seen as her fault.
It is interesting that the "Babysitter" legends stress harm to the children,
rather than the sitter herself; the message is that responsibility for others is
what matters. In this way, girls learn that taking good care of young chil-
dren is one of their primary duties (boys' stories seldom deliver this mes-
sage). In some variants, the intruder says to the girl over the phone, "I've
got one of your kids and I'm going to get the other. " EveR though they are
not really her kids, the babysitter is learning to accept the role of mother-
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? ? in-training that society is offering to her.
Another kind of legend popular among girls in this age group is the
account of a horrible accident or near-accident that happens in the company
of a young man. "The Boyfriend's Death" is one shocking legend cycle (D6gh
1968a; Tucker 1976, 367-70). It tells of a boy and girl, or perhaps a man
and wife, who drive down a deserted road and run out of gas. The boy or
man goes off to get gas, and the girl or woman stays in the car. In ten-year-
old Betsy's version, collected in southern Indiana, the horror begins while
the woman is waiting: ". . . she heard a-something like "HREECH! " and
a drip and something, a THUMP. She looked out the window and started
screaming, 'cause her husband was hanging by the tree, and that "CLICK"
sound was his throat being cut, the "Drip-drop" was the blood falling on
the ground, and the THUMP was him banging against the car. " In Betsy's
story we see a clear demarcation of sex roles: The man ventures out to get
gas, and the woman sits passively and safely in the car. While the woman
herself escapes from harm, she has the terrible shock of discovering her hus-
band hanging from a tree, dead and bleeding profusely. The emotional con-
tent of this legend varies somewhat according to the main characters; if they
are a boy and girl, the fear of being alone with a boy in a deserted place
may be predominant. But in this case, where a husband and wife are the
characters, the strongest feeling seems to be survivor guilt: The woman has
stayed safe and let her husband do the dirty work, and now she has to live
with the shock of his horrible death. In either case, there is an emphasis on
human relationships and responsibilities-not very far in this respect from
the focus of "The Babysitter. "
It would not be fair to discuss Betsy's story without giving her credit
for her wonderful sound effects, the "HREECH" and "Drip-drop" and the
"THUMP. " All of these effects add a great deal to the dramatic impact of
the story; it is much easier to visualize the scene with the sounds included.
Betsy was very proud of her ability to tell good scary stories, and she seemed
to work out elaborations in her sound effects as she went from tale to tale.
A serious and hard-working girl, Betsy enjoyed a position of leadership
among her friends and got special recognition from them for her storytelling
abilities.
Telling frightening legends sometimes provides a kind of therapy for
children who are very ill. In her article "At a Children's Hospital: A Folk-
lore Survey," Roberta Krell (1980) explores how storytelling helps children
to come to terms with their illnesses. One story Krell includes concerns a
child who, forced to clean an attic floor as punishment, dies of loneliness
or asthma (page 229). Krell points out that "a child who faces his own death
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? ? every day because of illness may find it easier to handle that fact by telling
stories of other children who have died" (page 231). This area of research
offers considerable scope for understanding and helping older children who
suffer from serious illness.
The last legend that I want to discuss is "The Hook," a perennially
popular story told often by girls in upper elementary and junior high or
middle school. "The Hook" has been well scrutinized by folklorists (D6gh
1968b) and has been collected from all over the United States. Its plot is
simple and fairly consistent: a girl goes out parking with a boy to the local
Lovers' Lane, and a bulletin comes to them from the car radio: A danger-
ous man with a hook-hand has escaped from the insane asylum. Although
the boy wants to stay in Lovers' Lane, his girlfriend insists that he drive her
home. When he gets out to open the car door on her side, he sees a dread-
ful indication of what could have happened if they had stayed in Lovers'
Lane: a hook hanging from the door handle.
Alan Dundes has analyzed "The Hook" with emphasis upon its psy-
chosexual content, principally from the girl's point of view (1971). He states
that girls who go out parking with their boyfriends are afraid that the boys
will be "all hands"; they have to resist being overwhelmed by sexual ad-
vances, and calling a halt to the adventure is the easiest way to alleviate their
anxieties. The hook itself is a phallic symbol, a reminder of what the park-
ing excursion was really all about (page 30). While Dundes's points are well
taken, there are other observations that can be made. The girl in this leg-
end is timorous and safety-minded, like the girl or woman in "The
Boyfriend's Death"; she does not want to take the chance of doing some-
thing that might be life-threatening. The boy, on the other hand, is full of
confidence and sexual assertiveness. He leaves only at the girl's urging, of-
ten with resentful grumblings. We see the male figure as a self-assured and
somewhat reckless but ultimately protective person, while the female figure
is more anxious, careful, and protective of both herself and her boyfriend.
The female sense of responsibility has a good effect here, but we certainly
get the impression that taking risks and being reckless is more of a male pre-
rogative. "The Fatal Initiation" comes to mind again as a paradigm of young
men's adventurous risk-taking.
Legends, as well as the funny-scary tales, reworked folk tales, and
fantasies of earlier childhood, offer a fascinating set of opportunities to the
folklorist. Much work remains to be done in collecting, classifying, and ana-
lyzing these stories; it will be very interesting to see how social changes, es-
pecially alterations in sex roles, affect children's stories of the future.
210 TALES AND LEGENDS
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? ? NOTES TO CHAPTER NINE
1. Collected by Patricia J. Dailey in Binghamton, New York, on 1 May 1982.
2. Collected by Ann Dowling in Rochester, New York, 31 March 1978.
3. For a more thorough discussion of young children's need to protect them-
selves from serious fright, see Tucker 1981a.
4. Collected by Gail Cohen in Johnson City, New York, on 21 April 1979. Un-
less otherwise indicated, all other sample stories in this chapter come from my disser-
tation. I want to thank my student collectors, who have done such a fine job in their
work with child informants.
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? ? IO TEASES AND PRANKS
Marilyn Jorgensen
INTRODUCTION
Writing about pranks and teases is an especially attractive task, possibly
because the study of these two particular forms of expressive activity bring
the researcher in such close contact with the child's delight in playful inter-
action and immense enthusiasm for living life to its fullest.
In the case of pranks (which I prefer to think of as tricks with little
degree of harm or mischief intended), the perpetrators have fun at the ex-
pense of the hurt or embarrassed victims, and the perpetrators of the pranks
are likely to have positive recollections of the deceptive behaviors in which
they have engaged. The victims of such pranks, however, might reasonably
be expected to try to forget as soon as possible because the victims of taunts
may be hurt and embarrassed.
The motivations for children's tricking and teasing victimizations can
be either benevolent (as in verbal abuse, or in tricks that may also involve
actions and objects) or of a harmful nature (as in verbal taunting, or in
pranks in which mischief is intended). But regardless of intentions or per-
ceptions involved in pranks, tricks, taunts, or teases, it is evident that these
traditional, prepackaged, and ready-made formulas for playful verbal and
kinesic interactions have been integral aspects of children's folklore for gen-
erations of children, a means of more fully experiencing and defining the
people in their lives and the world in which they live.
In this paper I will discuss taunts, teases, pranks, and tricks as forms
of victimization. Verbal teasing, as well as the more serious taunting of in-
dividuals, are behaviors that children are likely to experience at almost any
time and in any place. These activities occur most often at school in the class-
room, at the lunch table, or on the playground-and during play with friends
or siblings at home. Taunting (especially if socially unacceptable words or
taboos are involved) is usually not done in the presence of adult authori-
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? ? ties, but otherwise it is a fairly everyday type of occurrence. On the other
hand, tricks and pranks are distinguished from taunts and teases by the fact
that although they can and do occur in everyday situations, they also occur
on special, set-aside days when such forms of deception and victimization
are socially sanctioned and probably even expected.
In the sparse body of literature that does exist on children's trickery,
teasing, and related behaviors, there is no consensus with regard to termi-
nology, and terms like "teasing" and "tricking" are often used interchange-
ably. In addition, attempts such as that by Richard S. Tallman (1974, 269-
70) to differentiate between the goals of the practical joker (to fool the op-
ponent) and those of the trickster (to get something for nothing) seem too
limited in scope to be applicable to the many kinds of deceptive victimiza-
tions that exist in children's lore. Table 1 is designed as a beginning for the
identification of the kinds of behaviors and goals present in the four catego-
ries I will be discussing:
TABLE 1. Definitional Factors
Victimization Deception Benevolent Malicious
Taunt x
Tease x x
Prankxx x
Trick x x x
PRANKS AND TRICKS
The pranks and tricks favored by children are examples of what Erving
Goffman (1974) in his work on Frame Analysis has termed fabrications:
"The intentional effort of one or more individuals to manage activity so that
a party of one or more others will be induced to have a false belief about
what is going on" (page 83). The deceptive quality of the interactional be-
havior defined by Goffman as a fabrication is probably what makes pranks
and tricks so much fun-especially the thrill and excitement involved in an
adventure in which the success or failure of its outcome is at least partially
determined by one's own ability to perform. In addition, fabrications like
pranks and tricks are forms of children's lore that often are not entirely aban-
doned by youngsters as they progress through adolescence into adulthood
(Welsch 1974). Other forms of children's lore, such as nursery rhymes, jump-
rope rhymes, and rhymed taunts, are regularly discarded at crucial ages when
they come to be considered appropriate only for younger children. Pranks
21i4 TEASES AND PRANKS
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? ? and tricks continue to be popular through adolescence and even into adult-
hood. Thus, the kinds of pranks and tricks attempted and carried out may
change as one's age group changes, but not the enjoyment of engaging in
playful deceptions of different, possibly more sophisticated, kinds.
A review of the literature on the subject of pranks and tricks reveals
that very little attention has been devoted to the subject by folklorists, and
even less when only children's trickery is discussed separately from adult
behavior. In 1974, however, Southern Folklore Quarterly devoted an entire
issue to practical jokes in which Richard S. Tallman contributed an article
on the classification of practical jokes in terms of the actors and the actions
(in terms of nature, intent, and result) involved in the event, as well as the
dynamics of the related storytelling activities that sometimes occur afterward
as reminiscences. This same issue on practical jokes also contains a valuable
article by I. Sheldon Posen (1974a) on the traditional summer camp pranks
and practical jokes that children commonly engage in. In his analysis, Posen
focused on recurring themes found in the joking behavior he observed.
The following works also discuss schoolchildren's pranks and tricks:
The functions of tricking behavior for the schoolchild in the United States
are briefly explored by Mary and Herbert Knapp in One Potato, Two Po-
tato (1976, 91-100). The most popular pranks of British schoolchildren are
discussed in the last chapter of lona and Peter Opie's Lore and Language of
Schoolchildren (1959). Finnish schoolchildren's participation in the "deflat-
ing tradition" (or tricks at the expense of the unwitting) is discussed by Leea
Virtanen in chapter four of "Children's Lore" (1978, 51-58). Pranks (such
as raiding orchards and lighting fires) and named tricks (such as "Tick Tack,"
"Dummy Parcel," and "Ooh, My Toe") engaged in by children in school
and on the journey to and from school in different historical periods in New
Zealand are presented in Brian Sutton-Smith's comprehensive work A His-
tory of Children's Play: The New Zealand Playground, 1840-50 (1981la, 90-
91). The aspects of dissemination and regional variation of terminology in
the preadolescent boys' prank the "wedge" are briefly discussed by Gary
Alan Fine in the Center for Southern Folklore Magazine in its special issue
on children's folklore (1980d, 9).
Very little analytical work on the forms and functions of children's
pranks and tricks has been done, but Leea Virtanen (1978) has made ob-
servations with regard to various factors common to the "deflating tradi-
tion," such as the utilization of linguistic ambiguity in the construction of
verbal tricks and the social-interactional dynamics involved in "getting the
victim to fall into a trap of his own making" (page 53), in which the result
of the verbal deception is making a fool of oneself. Virtanen gives several
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? ? examples of such verbal deception, such as "Spot and Spit were fighting, who
won? If the other says 'Spit,' you spit on him" (page 53). The observations
made by Virtanen with regard to the use of verbal ambiguity and getting
the victim to fall into a trap of which he himself has participated in the mak-
ing, are common to many forms of children's lore, such as catch routines,
knock-knock jokes, riddles, and phone tricks.
Phone tricks, for example, all seem to share a common denomina-
tor: They are all fabrications that rely on ambiguity. This ambiguity exists
at several levels (Jorgensen 1984, 104-16). Perhaps the most apparent use
of ambiguity is with reference to speech play, or the ambiguity of words
(puns, homonyms, and so forth) that allows for the possibility of everyday
speech to be manipulated for fun and humor. A second level of ambiguity
is a kind of social-interactional ambiguity whereby the identity of the caller
may not be known to the victim. The use of the phone almost guarantees
that the identities of the individuals remain unknown. This ambiguity of
identity makes it quite easy for youngsters to engage in phone tricks and to
do the exasperating things that they would be highly unlikely to do in other,
less safe circumstances. The use of the telephone affords them an anonym-
ity that allows for a certain license to participate in this kind of trickery, rela-
tively free from the fear of the retribution or embarrassment that might oc-
cur in face-to-face settings (Jorgensen 1984). The last kind of ambiguity exists
at the level of social structure and is related to the position of the teenager
in the hierarchy of the social order. The adolescent in our society is in an
ambiguous period in his life, being neither child nor adult.
These phone tricks may be viewed as occurring at an ambiguous time
in the life of the caller, taking place in an ambiguous social-interactional set-
ting (because of the use of the phone), and sometimes utilizing the ambigu-
ous quality of words in order to play with everyday speech, to demonstrate
communicative competence, and to gain a sense of personal power (espe-
cially within the peer group). Phone tricks are just one example of the pranks
common to children's folklore.
Some of these behaviors are reserved for "special occasions. " In the
United States the two main times of the year historically set aside for the
playing of pranks and tricks are Halloween and April Fools' Day. The same
two days are set aside in the British Isles, with the addition of Mischief Night
on November 4 (the eve of Guy Fawkes Day), which is considered by lona
and Peter Opie (1959) to be a postponed celebration of Halloween. Mis-
chievous or impolite and disrespectful behavior by children on special days
of the year may be viewed as a reversal of everyday norms of polite behav-
ior and it is allowed to some extent or perhaps even anticipated. As long as
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? ? the tricksters and pranksters don't go too far-as long as their actions do
not injure anyone or cause great damage to property or life-the mischief
is usually excused. On some other day of the year it might not be. On Hal-
loween, as well as on Mischief Night in England, the behavioral reversals
tend to involve children and teenagers as initiators of unsociable acts aimed
either at peers, adults, or other authority figures, but on April Fools' Day
adults tend to join the children as the initiators of pranks and tricks. Many
of the traditional April Fools' tricks, such as the "fool's errand," involve face-
to-face interaction between the trickster and the victim, but most of the
Halloween pranks (which are often directed against personal property) oc-
cur under the cover of darkness: The pranksters are usually unseen and un-
known.
The unknown identity of the Halloween prankster is, of course, a
safeguard against retribution by the irate victim. The prankster's unsociable
and harmful behavior, however, is also reminiscent of the traditional behavior
associated with ancestors, ghosts, or other spirit powers, who are given free
rein to return to earth and cause trouble or play tricks on the living once a
year. Such practices are known in many widely separated cultures through-
out the world-from the Druidic celebration of Samhuin on the eve of 1
November to the Day of the Dead in Mexico, and even the Milamala har-
vest celebration reported by Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands (1954).
Some very creative and innovative pranks perpetrated by teenagers in New
York in the early 1970s are reported in an article published by Catherine
Harris Ainsworth entitled "Hallowe'en," which appeared in September of
1973 in the New York Folklore Quarterly. The following excerpts are from
essays on the topic of the celebration of Halloween, perceived and experi-
enced by 18- and 19-year-olds, and they illustrate some important points
about the social interactions and reversals of everyday polite behavior that
are associated with October 31 in our culture. Most of the teenagers who
chose to include reports of pranks they had played in their essays were boys,
although one young lady did mention briefly that she enjoyed tipping over
mailboxes and causing trouble by scaring people. Interestingly, one of the
best accounts (in terms of the most detailed recording of socially unaccept-
able behavior) was signed "anonymous," which is of course symbolic of the
social-interactional significance of this special night with regard to the prank-
ish behavior perpetrated by "unseen spirits of the night":
To start the night rolling we would soap a few windows and rap on
them when the people would be watching television. Next we found
a tree limb that grew over the road. A couple of us would climb up
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? ? and tie a dummy on a rope. As soon as a car was almost under the
tree, they swung the dummy right down in front of it. They would
either stop and get out and start cussing or just slow down and keep
going. (pages 180-81)
I remember Hallowe'en because that's the night the fire company was
called out to quench a blaze that measured a few inches in width but
stretched over two miles down the center of our local main road. It
was also the night the police received several complaints from irate
motorists who'd been shocked out of their pants when someone
dropped a very life-like looking dummy in front of their car. But as
the years passed, we became more mature, which is another way of
saying our plans became more devious, more daring, and more imagi-
native. Ours was the first town with a psychedelic cop car. It was also
the first with a stop and go light that turned green in all four direc-
tions at the same time. (pages 183-84)
Halloween is a night of mischief for all, not only for young children,
but also for the older teenagers. On the way to my friend's house I
paid a visit to a few of my neighbors. After receiving dirty looks from
them all year I thought it was an appropriate time to harass them.
So I broke a few of their pumpkins. I picked up my friends and we
headed out toward Main Street . .
