No More Learning

Further insight into young children's storytelling patterns comes from
Judith Haut, who analyzes her son Bryan's stories between the ages of three
and four. Haut states that, like other children, her son uses stories to enter-
tain, influence conversations, and gain prestige. By narrating, Bryan is able
to go beyond the kind of conversation adults expect from him and shift roles
to gain the interest of his listeners (1922, 33-45). As collections and analy-
ses of young children's stories have proliferated (see Preece 1987 and Paley
1990), it has been possible to understand narratives within a complex web
of psychological and social motivations.
With all of these analytical alternatives, a look at a two-year-old's
story can become quite a time-consuming venture-but it is sufficient here
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? ? to give a brief analysis linked to knowledge of the child's personality. Here
is a short narrative from two-and-a-half-year-old Janet, the daughter of well-
educated parents in Binghamton, New York:
Daddy cuts floor.
Daddy gets boo-boo.
Daddy go to doctor.
Daddy get a band-aid. '
This story has the rhythmic, line-to-line structure characteristic of very young
children's stories; the key word "Daddy" forms the basis of its development.
While there are no definite indicators of time passing, such as the words
"then" or "later," it is clear that some events precede others. Janet's father
had just been repairing the bathroom floor and had gone to the doctor to
get a bandage; all of these occurrences are retained in their proper sequence
in the story.
Even from such a brief and factual narrative, we can see that Janet is
an observant, sensitive child. She is concerned about her father's welfare and
eager to understand what has happened to him; her story puts his frighten-
ing accident into a comprehensible framework. Just before telling her story,
Janet spent some time alone in her crib. The collector overheard her saying
to herself:
Daddy play hockey? Yes!
Mommy play hockey? No!
This is part of a monologue rather than a story, but it shows Janet's interest
in all that characterizes and differentiates her parents. Since the publication
of Ruth Weir's Language in the Crib (1962), bedtime monologues have been
recognized as an important source of knowledge.
While real-life events provide a lot of material for stories, dreams fur-
nish some of the most significant themes and plot elements. Young children
may identify their narratives as dreams or, more commonly, tell what hap-
pened without mentioning that a dream was the source. Sometimes the dream
may be about an experience the child has had recently; then the reason for
its importance may be clearer.
Looking closely at young children's stories is sometimes just one facet
of an evaluation and treatment process. Individual case studies by psycholo-
gists have drawn some important conclusions about children's self-expres-
sion, partly by analyzing narratives that emerge in a therapeutic setting. In
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? ? one especially thorough study of stories told in a therapeutic environment,
Richard A. Gardner used a technique of eliciting stories from his patients
while telling stories of his own (1971). Therapy begins with a story told by
the doctor; then, as treatment progresses, the doctor's stories develop from
narrative material supplied by the patient. As the boy or girl grows more
confident about telling stories and dreams, the doctor can use stories to fo-
cus on key aspects of the patient's feelings, convey messages about positive
development, and bring about changes in behavior. When the child begins
to tell stories that sound happier, more serene in their conclusions, the doc-
tor knows that therapy can successfully come to an end.
Outside of a therapeutic setting, when four-, five-, and six-year-olds
are asked to tell a story, their choice may well be a traditional folktale.
"Hansel and Gretel," "Snow White," "Little Red Riding Hood," and
"Cinderella" are all among the stories that I have found to be especially
popular among young children. The reasons for this popularity are clear
enough: Parents read the tales to their children, bookstores sell them in at-
tractively bound volumes, and librarians include them in regular story hours.
The term "fairy tale" is often used for these traditional folk narratives, al-
though it most correctly applies to British tales about the small creatures
known as fairies.
Many scholars have assessed the appeal and value of folktales for
child readers and listeners, for example, Betsy Hearne (1989). In The Uses
of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (1976), Bruno
Bettelheim analyzes how folktales help children cope with psychological
problems in order to move toward adulthood. "Hansel and Gretel," accord-
ing to Bettelheim, provides children with a better understanding of starva-
tion, anxiety, and desertion fears (pages 159-66). Critics of Bettelheim's
psychoanalytical approach question the accuracy and appropriateness of this
form of analysis. Jack Zipes, author of Breaking the Magic Spell: Radical
Theories of Folk and Fairy Tales (1979), chastises Bettelheim for trying to
put together "static literary models to be internalized for therapeutic con-
sumption" (page 177). Alan Dundes questions Bettelheim's "uses of enchant-
ment and misuses of scholarship" (1991) while Kay F. Stone explores con-
troversies over the impact of fairy tales (1985). The most thorough assess-
ment of these issues is Maria Tatar's recent work Off With Their Heads!
Fairytales and the Culture of Childhood (1992). Criticizing Bettelheim for
his "male developmental model" that "defines the self through separation
and mastery" (pages 78-79), Tatar probes reworkings of traditional tales
to reveal their hidden messages for children. Perrault, the Grimms, and oth-
ers, Tatar says, have altered traditional stories so that they become lessons
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? ? about the evils of disobedience, laziness, untruthfulness, and other behav-
ioral traits perceived as dangerous by society. Close examinaton of reworked
folktales can uncover substantial didactic content that has little to do with
children's own priorities (see also Zipes 1983).
One fairly typical example of folktale retelling is a lively rendition of
"The Three Bears" told by David, a boy who was almost six. David, who
lived in Rochester, New York, at the time of collection, was thrilled to tell
his story for the tape recorder. He laughed, hesitated a few times, and then
began a long story that included the following: "This girl came along named
Goldilocks. Okee, okeeee, okee, okee, okee. And, then Goldilocks came along
and tried Papa-bear's porridge. That was too hooooooo-o-o-ot! She tried
Mama-bear's porridge. That was too cold. She tried Baby-bear's porridge.
That was ju-u-ust right. She ate it all up. Yum-yum-yum. "2 David is quite a
creative narrator, especially with regard to sound effects. A few words are
shouted, some vowels are extended for dramatic emphasis, and certain syl-
lables are repeated to show intensified feeling, while some chains of syllables
sound like speech play for the sheer pleasure of rhyming. In general, his ver-
sion of "The Three Bears" shows a special sensitivity to the experimental
possibilities that language offers him.
Perhaps the most practical reason why young children are so fond of
telling tales like "The Three Bears" is that the structure of these stories lends
itself so well to formulaic narration. There are so many repetitious lines,
verses, and episodes that the child who is just learning to put together a story
has a good chance of getting the sequence right. "Cinderella," "The Three
Billy Goats Gruff," and "Snow White" all have numerous repetitions that
ease recollection. Add to this feeling of competence the joy that the very
young take in repeating actions and words-in speech play and games, for
example-and you can see why folktale retellings are so popular. They of-
fer a good chance to have fun with a story, develop narrative skills, and per-
haps throw in a few original effects as well.
EARLY SCHOOL YEARS: Six TO NINE
As children get a little older, they may care more about making fairy tales
their own stories. Slightly different characters, a new setting, or a different
ending can satisfy this need for personal manipulation. Kristin Wardetzsky
(1990), drawing upon a data sample from the German Democratic Repub-
lic, suggests that children's own folktales differ markedly from the Grimms'.
Their concepts of villainy go beyond the conventional witches and stepmoth-
ers, and their happiest ending is the return to a harmonious home (pages
157-76). I have also found in my own fieldwork that children's oral and
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? ? dramatized versions of folktales teach us a great deal about the narrators'
interests, needs, and storytelling skills (Tucker 1980a). One interesting text
is eight-year-old Krystal's version of "Little Red Riding Hood. " Krystal, a
serious girl with a taste for sad stories, was attending day camp in southern
Indiana when she told her story about a little girl going to her grandmother's
house. Although the story's beginning made several listeners whisper "Red
Riding Hood! " it soon became clear that Krystal valued her own ingenuity
above traditional identification. Her villain was a "killer," not a wolf, and
the only violent act that occurred was his removal of the little girl's hair with
a knife. The story ended with the killer's threat: "'Every time I come to your
grandmother's house, I'm gonna cut, I'm going to cut off your head and a
finger, and a ear, and a nose, and a eye and a tooth,' and so she never came
back to the house again. The end. " This conclusion is reminiscent of some
of the dialogue in the original "Red Riding Hood": "Why, Grandmama,
what big eyes you have! . . . What a big nose you have! . . . What big teeth
you have! " Besides containing these familiar terms of emphasis, Krystal's
story follows the basic plot line of "Red Riding Hood" (type 333, The Glut-
ton, in Aarne and Thompson 1961). Krystal must have known this narra-
tive structure since her early childhood; it is straightforward and exciting, a
good framework to use for creative story-building.
The most important question about Krystal's story is why she changed
the ending so much. What motivated her to let the little girl get away so eas-
ily? One deceptively simple answer is that she needs to express her original-
ity; this has to be her own story, so that she can feel proud of her work as a
narrator. What seems especially significant in her story, however, is the sen-
sitivity shown toward modern living conditions and dangers. In today's cit-
ies we measure a walk in blocks, not vaguely defined stretches, and we hardly
need to feel worried about attacks from wolves. Burglars, rapists, murder-
ers, and maniacs are far more threatening to us, and Krystal has chosen one
of these frightening figures to use in her narrative. Her choice demonstrates
Marianne Rumpf's point that the assailant in "Red Riding Hood" can be
human or animal, supernatural or realistic; the story has adapted to differ-
ent social requirements for many years, and its flexibility shows every sign
of continuing (Rumpf 1955, 4).
Within the flexible network of children's storytelling, it has become
increasingly common for children to build creative tales upon frameworks
offered by movies and videotapes. Sylvia Grider's term "media narraform"
is used to indicate a story based on a movie that the narrator has seen (Grider
1981). In my own research, I found that children about age six or seven en-
joy using movie versions of tales like "Aladdin" and "Beauty and the Beast"
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? ? as points of departure for their own imaginative stories. For example, the
heroine of "Cinderella" becomes "Cinderella vampire" or "Cinderella tiger,"
as young narrators shift the frame to suit their fancy (Tucker 1992).
Another form of storytelling that has flourished in recent years has
been the composition of a computer story. Teachers have encouraged their
pupils to write and to print out their own stories with the help of a wide
range of computer software. Programs such as Kidwriter and Explore-A-
Story make it possible for young writers to create their own printed story
texts, taking great pride in the creation process (Eltgroth 1988, 1989). Some
computer programs combine art with writing, making story composition
a delightfully multifaceted process (Summers 1988). In schools where
children's creative stories and artwork are published, the researcher can dis-
cover narratives that reflect children's story-sharing as well as individual
creativity.
In addition to stories based on folktale models, tales from oral tradi-
tion that begin frighteningly and end happily are very popular among chil-
dren in the early years of elementary school. These tales differ from those
of folktale origin in that they are generally transmitted from child to child,
rather than from parent or teacher to child. The first and second grades are
years of discovery in many forms, and one of these is storytelling apart from
adult influence. At recess, after school, and at parties, boys and girls share
the stories they have recently learned--often from somewhat older friends
or siblings. In this manner a story like "The Golden Arm" or "One Black
Eye" can remain fresh from one generation of schoolchildren to the next,
constantly being rediscovered and passed on to new recruits.
My favorite term for traditional tales that end happily, in spite of a
worrisome start, is "funny-scary story. " Many of the second- and third- graders
with whom I worked in the summer of 1976 used this term; it seemed to re-
assure their listening friends that a story would be "not really scary. " I found
that these youngsters, new to the sharing of stories, found it very hard to lis-
ten to frightening tales that didn't end with some kind of happy resolution.
They were beginning to experiment with fear, just starting to understand the
pleasure of "a good scare," and constant reassurance was necessary.
One especially venerable funny-scary story is the tried-and-true "It
Floats"; I heard it myself at camp in the late 1950s. Seven-year-old Stacy,
one of the quieter girls at the camp in southern Indiana where I worked, told
the story with much enthusiasm: "I got a funny-scary story. One time this
boy and girl were walking home from their uncle's house, 'cause they stayed
too late, and they were walking past this house and people say it was
haunted. And then they stopped to look at it and they heard something say,
202 TALES AND LEGENDS
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? ? '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-
20 5
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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.
20zo7
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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
209
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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.