Author Archives: Reece McIntyre

Goulash

Intro

The following is a folk-meal that was told to me by the lead pastor of my church. He is a non-denominational Christian pastor and is a caucasian male. I found out about this tradition of his when asking him about any folklore that his family may have had. We met at a local coffee shop in our town where I recorded the story. This is a direct transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted.

Goulash

“My mom made goulash. This thing called goulash. Whenever I tell people what goulash is they look at me like they’ve never heard of it. Do you know what that is?”

Me: “I’ve never heard of it.” 

“Nobody ever knows but that’s what she called it. She got the recipe from her mom, who got it from her mom. This is a dish, it’s like a pasta dish with noodles, meat, and cheese, and onions. Typically it would be seasoned a lot, I mean, a lot a lot. With paprika and other stuff. A lot of the time it was beef I think, but I don’t think it mattered too much what kind of meat. Oh, I think the vegetables were usually like tomatoes and something else. It’s always got a lot of red in it. Ya, it was a standard fair in my house.” 

Me: “Is it from a country?”

“No, from what I know… that’s a great question, I’m trying to remember. She said it was… well, my mom’s side of the family is Irish so I think it came from Ireland, but I don’t know why goulash would come from Ireland, it sounds more Hungarian. But ya that was a dish that was passed down, and my wife now makes it. But it changes a little as we make it. My mom used to put onions in it, but my wife doesn’t put onions in hers so it has probably been adapted over the years.” 

Me: “Is it just like a meal, or is it a special kind of meal that you eat at like thanksgiving or something?” 

“Nope, it’s just a meal that we have. Oh and we have Chinese every Christmas Eve. [Name]’s family had Chinese Christmas Eve and I had never had Chinese Christmas Eve. That’s just what we do. (wow, that was a quick bonus folk-tradition there at the end, though it may have been stolen from A Christmas Story).” 

Analysis

The meal that my pastor told me about in this story is one that, like he assumed would happen, I had never heard of. This is another weird, without context folk thing that my pastor told me. A lot of the things he said he had a hard time coming up with why they did it, saying a lot “we just did, I didn’t ask why.” The recipe he gives is not very detailed but it does give enough to be compared to actual goulash recipes. On the whole, what he said was very similar, from the paprika and tomatoes to beef being the main meat. From what I gathered from the site allrecipes, goulash is a pasta dish as he said, but can also be served as a stew, among other things. 

I thought it was interesting that his wife’s side of the family was Irish, but he didn’t think it would be Irish, he thought it would be Hungarian. It turns out, he was actually right on the money as goulash is typically a Hungarian dish. There are also dishes considered American goulash, which could also be the style that his family eats. It was also interesting to me that recipes do change so frequently. Even from his mother-in-law to his wife there was a drastic change in the recipe. Who knows how much this recipe may have changed in the past.

The Finger Circle

Intro

The following is a folk game that I used to play with my friend back in high school. We both went to school together in Oregon, from middle school through high school so I have known him for a while. The following are the rules of how to play the infamous finger circle game. My friend is still at home so I asked him to retell the story while I recorded him. This is a direct transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted. 

The Game

“Alright, what exactly do you want me to talk about? Like just the game itself?”

Me: Ya, just say how the game actually works and where you learned it and stuff.

“Ohh, okay, so the classic finger circle game is something I learned… hmm, probably before high school I think, I’m not really sure. It’s just kinda one of those games you remember but you never know who did it to you first. So how it works is, you make a circle with your fingers… the pointer finger and thumb. And then you have your other three fingers, they stick out like this, *does it*. Oh it’s like the dumb thing that people always claim is like the symbol for white power. No people. It’s the finger circle game, stop ruining it. We don’t want another Pepe the Frog. Okay right, back to the game. So you make your hand like this right, and then you put it below your waist like this, *does, and then goes to punch me*. Ha! Categorically outplayed nerd.” 

Me: Bruh stop, *laughing*, can you just explain what happens. They can’t see you this is just, it’s just the audio, not a video.

“Okay, so what you people need to hear, I put the finger circle down here *tries to get me again*, [name] looked at it, and so I legally now get to punch him.”

Me: Okay but say more, like what are the actual rules.

“Oh my, okay, so I think it’s different based on who you play it with and who they got it from, but the way I play is you make the finger circle and then you put it below your waist and if another person looks at it then you get to punch them. Other people might have it be like, below the knee or something but that’s dumb. Then of course there’s the variant rules, but I don’t know if they’re ready for that.”

Me: Dude just tell me. 

“Okay okay, so then there’s this other rule that if the person that sees it can stick their finger in the hole before the other person gets rid of it, then that person gets to punch the first person twice. Then, ya I know, so many rules, then, if the original finger circle guy can close his fingers around the second’s finger, that guy gets to punch the victim three times. Let’s see… I don’t think I’m missing anything. There aren’t really winners, but if you can outsmart the person into looking at it then you won, like I just did, ha loser. Is that all I need to say?”

Me: Yup, that’s good.

Analysis

This piece of folklore was something that I knew about originally, but hearing it from another person was also interesting. My friend talked about the different versions of the game, which I knew, but we had always just played the one way: i.e. below the waist and including the variant rules. Also, when I say rules, they aren’t written rules. They are just kind of passed along rules to how the game should work. Some people online may have written the rules but we don’t, and I’m pretty sure most people aren’t, googling the rules to the finger circle game. Mostly, because it doesn’t matter that much, but also because each group kind of has their own rules that they play by.

The Old Man At The Beginning

Intro

The following is a folk myth that my friend told me. We both went to school together in Oregon, from middle school through high school so I’ve known him for a while. My friend is still at home for college so I asked him to tell me a folk story that he had heard in his childhood. This is a direct transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted.

Story

“Okay, this is one of the only good folk stories I actually know. So I’m just a little bit Native American right, a little bit of the Crow tribe from the Wyoming area I think. This is the only story that I think I ever heard about… probably because it’s pretty important, you know, creation stories and all that. It goes like this. In the beginning the world was just covered in water. And then there was this old guy, I think he was just named Old Man in the story for some reason, not important enough to give an actual name I guess. Anyway, he was looking around, I don’t know if he had a boat or something, but he saw some ducks off in the distance. For some reason the ducks had red eyes, don’t ask me why, I just remember it cause like, why do ducks have red eyes. Anyway he goes up to them and is like ‘is there only water in this world?’ 

And the ducks are like, ‘that’s all we’ve seen but you could try checking underneath.’ 

Then the Old Man tells the youngest duck to dive down and look for land. The youngest duck is down there for a while so the Old Man says, ‘he must have drowned.’

But then the younger duck comes back up and has a ball of mud in his bill. The old guy takes the mud and blows on it three times. They say that the mud grew and filled the earth and that’s how the land got there. I think they believe the Old Man made the land for them.”

Analysis

Of the three folklore pieces that I got from my friend, this was the only one that I didn’t have prior knowledge of going into it. And when I say I don’t have a clue what he was talking about, I mean I thought he was just telling me some made up story. He didn’t know the name of the story, so I had to do some digging into what it might be called. After a while of searching, I found that the Crow people had a deity they would call Old Man Coyote, and that was the man in this story. 

To the Crow people, this was a story that described how the land came to be. To us nowadays, we would see this as a piece of folklore categorized as myth. The Crow people took this story as something that probably actually happened, though my friend obviously does not believe it to be true. Because of this importance in their religion, the Old Man At The Beginning can be considered a sacred narrative of the people. In all my searching for this story, I could only find about three other sources of the story. Despite its rarity, my friend actually told a decent retelling of the story, only missing a few things from the other sources. For another reference, see https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/OldManattheBeginning-Crow.html.

Grandmother’s Finnish Medicines

Intro

The following is a story about folk-medicine from my grandpa that heard all of this from his grandmother. My grandpa grew up in the northwest United States, and went into the Navy when he was 18. He is now 74 years old. I was told this story when asking about any possible stories that his family had when he was growing up, as he had lived an exciting life, doing many crazy things with his time. I recorded him via phone call. This is a direct transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted.

Story

“My grandmother was old country, she was born in 1878 in Finland. And she moved to the United States in 19… 1896, why am I thinking of what they said on that heritage site. And so, being from the old country when I was a kid growing up she had a lot of weird customs, that’s what they did back there in Finland. She was a Laplander, there from the northern part of finland. And she, they had a lot of homemade remedies for different things. And I, most of the stuff that she did to herself was stuff she had learned as a young girl in finland. And she would want, if I got sick, say she would want to use these homemade remedies on me. 

Some of them were just really bad. If you had a fever, she would want you to take chopped up onions and milk and boil them together and drink it. *laughing* I wouldn’t do it. 

They had a, there’s a medicine called ichthammol and basically what it is is it’s a pharmaceutical tar. And she used to rub it on her knees and on her hips for arthritis. If you could imagine rubbing all that black stuff all over yourself. And then she would wrap herself in linens. She was… I mean I loved her dearly, but she was really weird.”

Analysis

Hearing this short piece from my grandpa about the weird ways of his Finnish grandmother was interesting. While he didn’t give too many specific examples of the folk medicine his grandma performed, he gave a couple of examples that show just how weird some of them might be. The first thing he explained with boiling the onions and milk sounds absolutely awful and I have no idea why anyone would think that that would be good for a fever. Now, I have heard that onions help with illnesses because of the way they can clear your sinuses, but pairing them with milk and then boiling it seems quite outlandish. But, to my great great grandmother, apparently, this was a common thing to be done in Finland unless she was just a mean old lady messing with my grandpa. As for the use of ichthammol, I couldn’t find anything suggesting that that actually helped with arthritis. The medicine doesn’t seem to have any origins in Finland, so I am not sure how his grandma came up with that idea to rub it on her knees.

Girl Finds Gold

Intro

The following is a folk-legend from my grandpa that heard the story from his mother. My grandpa grew up in the northwest United States and went into the Navy when he was 18. He is now 74 years old. I was told this story when asking about any possible stories that his family had when he was growing up, as he had lived an exciting life, doing many crazy things with his time. He now enjoys fishing and gold mining. I recorded him via phone call. This is a direct transcribed script of what was said in the story, with the various “umm’s” and “uhh’s” omitted.

Story

“Oh I got a story for you. My mother was born in Butte, Montana. Her father, my grandad, when they listed his occupation they listed it as miner. He was a gold miner. And mom tells a story that he told her, some miners were up in the mountains, they were at a camp. It was like seeing the pictures on TV, you know like they do with gold towns? That’s where she was raised until she was about six or seven years old. And there was a creek that her dad, my grandad, that they were operating a sluice box on this creek, they were gold mining. And mom used to say that grandpa used to tell her a story about a girl that had lived there. The girls dad would tell her ‘go off and play, we’re working.’ Well there was another little stream that was near there, and that girl would go and play in the stream… this was in the summertime. And she looked down the stream and there were all these really pretty yellow rocks. So she gathered up all these yellow rocks and put them in her skirt, or whatever she was wearing. Went back to camp and she had a cigar box that she would keep all her precious momentos, in this cigar box. Well she took these yellow rocks and she put them in this cigar box. So one day, her dad was sitting down to eat dinner and he was like ‘oh I hit it big today’ and he pulls out of his pocket a few of these little yellow stones. And the girl was like ‘I got more than that sitting in the creek.’ And he says ‘what!’ So she went back to the cigar box and got these handful of yellow stones out and put them on the table and he about went berserk. And so he said ‘where’d you get these’ and she says ‘in the creek right there.’ So they went back to mine that creek and they found a lot of gold in that creek. Ya, and the only reason they mined it was because of what she found. And she was only like six years old.”

Analysis

This legend about a girl finding gold in a creek that my grandpa told me was something that he thought to be true. He is a big gold miner himself, often just using pans or a sluice box. He taught my dad how to do it and now we sometimes go out to the Rogue River to look for gold with him. It didn’t surprise me that one of the folk-stories he was able to tell me was about gold mining. When trying to find other forms of this story I wasn’t able to find any about a young girl finding gold in the creek. I also don’t know what the creek or river is so that made it impossible to specify if it actually happened. 

The story is also interesting to me because it probably originated sometime in the heart of the gold rush. I think that there may have been a bunch of other gold rush folk stories about people finding a ton of gold in creeks and rivers across the west coast. If I had to guess, I would say that this story my grandpa told me was more specific to the region his mom had been from, but there are many more to be heard around the west.