Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

WATAHOTAHO

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Louis, Missouri
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

WATAHOTAHO

Camp shwayder

Item: A story from camp, called WATAHOTAHO

 

Transcribed from our interview:

My informant’s explanation:

“First day of every camp session,  which is in the mountains, they take everybody to this like opening in the mountains, yeah I’m not going to remember this well but, they oh I know I remember now, there was randomly in this mountains there was a stack of rocks that was unexplainable, not from an avalanche, either some natural thing or man made, it was kind of weird. It looked like a cave with some weird rocks out fornt. This camp direct has this big walking stick and he goes up there with all the campers and every time he tells this story on Watahotaho.

 

It is a story of an Indian tribe in which there was a chief and there are three sons and one is hunting, one grows things,a nd one herds, idk, but they get ina  huge fight and they all go and their land used to be very beautiful and when they got in a fight they all left and they didn’t do well making tribes, and their old tribe didn’t do well. So chief tried to have them come back, he turns to each one and tells them they need to work together.  The cave was where it all happened. You all yell watahotaho together because the spirit is still around, and the legend is that if everybody says it in unison, you can hear a spirit calling back. They send some counselor away, and they do a delayed echo so it sounds like a sprit is calling back.

Little kids really bought into it, so it was funny by the time I was older. Every year you come he changes his story a little bit, so you realize how stupid it is. “

 

What it meant to my informant: “Well it was a good way to entertain these kids, to get them introduced to camp and get them to interact with eachother. The shouting thing was just sort of fun. I would just run around camp and to make fun of it I would just yell watahotaho because I thought it was so stupid, but the kids loved it.”

There are several key elements to this tradition, like when this happens and the interactive portion of the story. The story’s theme is teamwork and community, and since this is the first day of a summer camp for kids, this encourages the children to be more outgoing and embrace each other as a community. The interactive portion supports this, forcing the kids to work together. Moreover, by yelling WATAHOTAHO, the kids are almost performing enactive speech, their shouts in unison symbolizing the bonds they create. My informant said it was most effective for smaller children, which makes sense: they are most gullible, so the counselor’s trickery would be more effective. Regardless, Justin Elliot grasped the “silliness” of the word, which is also effective for small children; letting young children speak in a different language at the top of their lungs is exciting and liberating for them, especially because they are normally a disempowered community that must follow rules like maintain “inside voices.” Thus, immediately the campers are introduced to a new community and set of rules that sets the tone for the rest of their stay at the camp.

One-Testicled Basketball Coach

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

Basketball Coach

Legend/Joke

 

My informant told me a story about the basketball coach at his school:

 

“We had this really mean basketball coach, who would often get angry at students for messing around. He would get all angry and red and would scream at the kids when they acted out of order. The funny thing was, though, that his voice would go really high when he yelled. People thought it was really funny, so it was hard to take him seriously. They would say that he, during a practice, wasn’t watching and got hit in the nuts with a basketball, so he lost a testicle and thats why his voice is so high and he’s so angry all the time — compensating for the missing testicle.”

My informant enjoyed the story and said people brought it up  with their friends whenever the coach got mad at them.

The story is a means of undermining the seriousness of the Coach’s anger, belittling the Coach and empowering the students to battle the coach’s authoritative yelling. Making fun of the coach for having only one testicle, students call him less of a man, using comedy to feel less intimidated by his shouting.

 

The Orchestra Pit

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Student Housing
Performance Date: April 21st
Primary Language: English

Contextual Information

Time of Interview: April 21st, 4:53 p.m.

Location of Interview: Interior of Informant’s Room, Arts and Humanities

Informant’s First Encounter w/ Folklore: Freshman Year of Private High school

When Folklore is performed: Amongst freshman theater students at Informant’s High school

 

Transcript:

“In high school theatre, everyone was convinced that the seniors our freshman year had sex in the orchestra pit and on every couch, even though our crew of theatre nerds was intensely prude and had no evidence whatsoever. But whenever we went down to the pit we all freaked out about accidentally touching dried bodily fluids and catching an STD. In our defense, the pit was dark and dirty, so the idea that the upperclassmen had lots of sex down there isn’t entirely unproven. Or the kids who were two and three years older than us just liked to make up stories about people having sex in the pit and the green room!”

 

The transition between junior high and high school can often be a jarring one. Homework is increased, the race for college begins, and the dating scene finally becomes a reality. With so much change occurring, one often needs some event or story to celebrate the passing of such a liminal period. Fortunately for my informant, her theater crew was more than willing to oblige.

The Legend of Cú Chulainn

Nationality: American
Age: 36
Occupation: Writer
Residence: Bellmawr, New Jersey
Performance Date: April 22nd
Primary Language: English

Time of Interview: April 22nd, 7:30 p.m.

Location of Interview: Interior of Arts and Humanities Study Lounge via Telephone

Informant’s first encounter w/ folklore: Studying in Trinity College Library, 2011

When folklore is performed: When amongst friends, children, etc. in social gatherings.

 

Transcript:

“I’ll give you one that’s a story within a story. There’s a fellow named Cú Chulainn, and he’s kind of the archetypal warrior who personified Celtic warriors. He was a great warrior in the myth of Ireland, and he was in a perpetual war with the ‘Conaught’ in the west of Ireland. He was part of a group of warriors who were particularly known as the ‘Red Branch’ warriors and they were the army that was to defend Ireland from the oncoming forces of Conaught. Within this story of the larger story of Cú Chulainn, what happened was that, through some difficulties, the ‘Red Branch’ soldiers all fell asleep and only Chulainn was to defend the path from the Conaughts. He fought man against man against every invader who fought with the Celts. The Conaughts sent some of their greatest warriors, and he beat them all… But when he beat them all, he realized that he was dying from all the wounds that had cut into him but it had been prophesized that he wouldn’t die by an enemy’s sword, so he stumbled over to a pole and tied himself to it so that he would die standing up so that it would never be said that he ‘fell to an enemy’s sword.’ And that’s one of ‘hundreds’ of stories of Cú Chulainn.”

 

The legend of Cú Chulainn is a popular one amongst Irish natives, and his legend has spread not only through folklore but also through well-known works of literature [1]. He represents national pride and Irish heritage, serving as a sort of founding father for the Irish people. Stories of his are passed around at an early age, imparting the various morals and lessons that are to be gained from his adventures. In this particular story, he displays Irish values of tenacity and clearness of vision.

 

[1] William Butler Yeats wrote several pieces based on the legend, including the plays On Baile’s Strand, The Green Helmet, At the Hawk’s Well, The only Jealousy of Emer, and The Death of Chuchulain. Stories of Chulainn appear occasionally in Frank McCourt’s bestselling 1996 memoir, Angela’s Ashes.

Michael Collins’ Train Ride

Nationality: American
Age: 36
Occupation: Writer
Residence: Bellmawr, New Jersey
Performance Date: April 22nd
Primary Language: English

Contextual Information

Time of Interview: April 22nd, 7:30 p.m.

Location of Interview: Interior of Arts and Humanities Study Lounge via Telephone

Informant’s first encounter w/ folklore: Studying in Trinity College Library, 2011

When folklore is performed: Amongst friends in public places such as coffee shops, bars, etc.

 

Transcript

“A good historical story would be the story of Michael Collins when he was the leader of the Irish resistance against British Occupation in 1919-1921. He was a leader of the resistance and a talented mastermind, known for picking off enemy leaders and engaging against armies much better armed than he was. He was the most wanted man in Ireland, and there was a time when he had escaped from a holding cell and he managed to attack a British soldier one night and steal his clothes. He was known as a master of disguise, and he disguised himself as British soldier and then jumped onto a train convoy full of British soldiers who were just arriving in Ireland to come looking for him. He then rode this train back to Dublin, riding with this army, and went completely unnoticed.”

 

Michael Collins was the leader of the IRA from 1919 to 1922, and serves as a hero for most Irish nationalists. His stories bring to life the conflict between the Irish and the English, often used as a means to inspire other Irishmen to action or to simply reflect on the ideals of an Irish citizen. The stories are also used as a means to incite fear in the English. In the case of this particular story, the resolution suggests that if Michael Collins can disguise himself as one of them, perhaps other Irish supporters are hidden amongst the British ranks, inciting distrust and anxiety amongst the Irish opposition.