Category Archives: Childhood

The Titanic – Children’s Song

Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Lancaster, CA
Performance Date: April 15, 2021
Primary Language: English

Context:

My informant, RW, is my mom. She grew up in Texas and attended YMCA camps most summers in her childhood in the 1970s. I have heard her sing this song to my brother and I at many points, but never knew exactly where she learned it. This piece was collected informally at home when I asked her to sing it again for me to record. I refer to myself as SW in the text.

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Main Text:

RW: “This was from the YMCA camp I believe. Or… I think it was YMCA camp… it was at GDRA in Texas, I think it was YMCA but… 

‘The Titanic never made it

And never more shall be

It was sad when that great ship

Went down to the bottom of the sea

It was sad, how sad!

It was sad, too bad!

It was sad when that great ship

Went down to the bottom of the…

Uncles and aunts!

Little bitty children lost their pants!

It was sad when that great ship 

Went down to the bottom of the sea’

And it’s all happy and peppy and you sing right along with ‘everybody died, yay!’ There was a lot more to that song, but that’s like the chorus.”

SW: “So you did that at YMCA camp, did it spread past there? Did everybody know it?”

RW: “All of my friends did!”

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Analysis:

This is a good example of the juxtaposition of tragic events in a joking context in folklore. While it’s not necessarily directly reckoning with the Titanic sinking since my mom learned it at YMCA camp in the 1970s, it is still an example of how children often have a morbid curiosity and like to make jokes about the things we would consider generally unfit for children to know about. In a way, it is also boundary exploration and learning how to express taboo topics in a way that is socially acceptable. By singing about the Titanic sinking, kids are learning how to navigate the unstable world of topics adults try to shield them from in their own unique and playful way.

Beads of Courage

Nationality: Asian
Age: 44
Occupation: Nurse
Residence: Honolulu, HI
Performance Date: 4/18/21
Primary Language: English

Background

Informant is the auntie of the Interviewer from the mother’s side. Informant has been working as a medical nurse for 16 years.

Context

Informant discusses recurring interactions between patients and nurses at the hospital they work at. This event takes place over the course of a child’s stay at a hospital, especially if they are undergoing extensive treatment like chemotherapy. The conversation happened over FaceTime, as the informant was on their lunch break at work when the conversation took place.

Transcript

Interviewer: “How about like if um, like if a small kid like comes into a hospital like how do you guys make them comfortable?”

Informant: “Oh like bribery?”

Interviewer: “Yeah! Yeah! Like how do you bribe them?”

Informant: “Like toys? We give them toys or, like, like when they’re getting a procedure or… Oh! How about like the beads? Like the beads of courage? That’s pretty consistent. Ok so for you know chemotherapy patients?”

Interviewer: “Mmm hmm.”

Informant: “Uh when they get procedures done like, they’ll have like uhh like specific beads and they’ll make a necklace out of it. So like if they get a shot or like chemotherapy or a medication, they’ll get beads for each specific thing, and I can actually grab you the sheet thing, well, it’s actually like a foundation that provides the beads, you can look it up online, called beads of courage. 

Interviewer: “Cool alright, and the beads represent..?”

Informant: “One bead will represent like a medication, one bead a needle stick, or like a point access. Like each procedure, they get one bead for each thing, and then at the end of their treatment, like they have this long necklace, and it’s like a remembrance of what they’ve been through, yeah.”

Interviewer: “Aww that’s super sweet, yeah.”

Thoughts

I had not heard of beads of courage until this interview, and after listening to my auntie talk about them and learning about their organization, it seems like a sweet memento for a period of extreme anguish. According to the beads of courage website, they “are a non-profit that is dedicated to improving the quality of life for children and teens coping with serious illness, their families, and the clinicians who care for them through our Arts-in-Medicine Programs” (Beads of Courage, 2021). The organization has been around since 2005 and works with hundreds of hospitals internationally. Beads of courage are not specific to the hospital my auntie works at, but this shared tradition shared internationally across hospitals and their workers shows how international traditions can be. The sentiment of beads of courage exists beyond cultures, the sentiment of receiving a physical item that signifies everything a patient has gone through is recognizable cross-culturally. I enjoy the statement and mission of beads of courage, and think it brings families and patients a source of joy and strength during objectively terrible times.

For more information about beads of courage, visit their website:

Home

Beads of Courage, Beads of Courage Inc., 2021, www.beadsofcourage.org/.

Children’s Folk Tales in Estonia

Nationality: Estonia
Age: 48
Occupation: Property Manager
Residence: Costa Mesa, California
Performance Date: 4/23/2021
Language: Estonian, English

Background: The informant is a 48-year-old woman who was born in Estonia and immigrated to the United States, and currently lives in California. She still participates in Estonian traditions by attending the “Estonian House” which is an Estonian community located in Los Angeles.

Context: The folklore was collected during a scheduled zoom meeting in which I interviewed two native Estonians who currently live in Los Angeles and who are close friends.

Main Piece: “A huge part of my growing up was ‘Eesti ennemuistsed jutud’ and in the Soviet Union we had the series ‘Saia rahva lood’ or ‘tales of a hundred nations’, I read them, we enjoyed them very much. But what the Estonians had was ‘Eesti ennemuistsed jutud’, Estonian ancient tales, and one very big part of it was a farmer called ‘Kaval Ants’ fighting an evil called ‘Vanapagan’. It’s not called Satan, but it’s, you know the one who came from down. And this witty farmer, poor witty farmer always outsmarted the evil ‘Vanapagan’. ‘Vanapagan’ is ‘old pagan’ but it actually means ‘devil’. So ‘Kaval Ants’ and ‘Vanapagan’, those are the tales of my childhood, we read them and it’s a big thick book of Estonian fairy tales, where always this poor boy or poor girl was working, slaving for a master and at the end he or she got justice. Not always, Estonian fairy tales are not always very happy endings, but not as grim as you may think. And many tales had animals, like instead of people. Usually there were foxes and wolves, and the foxes outsmarted them.”

Interpretation: The first thing that caught my attention was the distinction the informant made between Estonian folk tales and the more “official” stories that the Soviet authorities used that were called ‘Saia rahva lood’. While the informant did not go into too much detail about the narrative and plot points of these tales, many of the common themes in Estonian folk tales are made very clear here. Furthermore, this serves as further evidence that Estonian tales are completely different from what was seen in the more Western nations. Many tales from the West center around royalty and fantasy, whereas Estonian tales are very grounded and have a peasanty humbleness to them. The characters are often farmers or animals and they have to use their wits, not sheer strength, to outsmart their opponents. Another thing that really caught my eye was how ‘old pagan’ is synonymous with the devil in the tale of Kaval Ants. This provides some interesting insight into the more religious realm of Estonian culture and how pagans were seen as devils and evil doers in the eyes of the Orthodox Christian Estonians. There is a lot of interesting history surrounding Estonian religion that ties to many of the themes seen in these tales.

For another version of this tale read:

Kreutzwald, Friedrich Reinhold. Eesti rahva ennemuistsed jutud. Avita, 1996 (first published 1866).

Leo Carillo Amphitheater

Background: The informant is a 14-year-old high school freshman living in El Segundo, California. The informant is my brother.

Context: After family dinner, my brother overheard a conversation about folklore I was having with my parents and he seemed interested, so I decided to explain the field of folklore to him and even interview him on some of the folklore he was aware of.

Main Piece: The informant described he and his friends stumbled upon an abandoned amphitheater on a trip to Leo Carillo State Park a few years ago.

Informant: Me and my friends would go there and there was like, or like the amphitheater, it was said like ‘Oh if you go in there, you die’. We would always get, f*cking, scared sh*tless whenever we would go near that.

Collector: Who said that?

Informant: I don’t know dude; it was like my friends and there was just like that story of that amphitheater.

Collector: So, it was an amphitheater in the middle of the forest?

Informant: No, the slender forest (another piece of folklore my brother has described to me before) and the amphitheater are two different things. It was just a tiny abandoned amphitheater.

Collector: And none of you ever went in there?

Informant: No, never. We barely ever went NEAR it dude. We would like ride our bikes there, and we would just run away.

Interpretation: This story of the haunted amphitheater is a great example of how children can create folklore about haunted or abandoned places without any prior knowledge or local lore. The informant and his friends obviously believed their saying “If you go in there, you die” because they clearly tried to avoid the place as much as possible. I find it interesting that the ghost stories I’ve heard from adults seem to have much more of a narrative, whereas the ghost stories or haunted places my brother has described to me when he was much younger are not so much narratives, but rather simple scares or sayings such as “If you go in there, you die”. Perhaps analyzing the differences between how adults and children tell their haunted tales can provide some interesting insights into the genre of ghost folklore.

Secret Summer Camp Chant

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Nationality: American
Age: 68
Occupation: Computer Consultant
Residence: Healdsburg, California
Performance Date: April 26. 2021
Primary Language: English

Background:

The informant’s mother used to say this phrase as a playful thing to her children. While my informant generally liked this chant for its nostalgiac purposes, her mother used it in a variety of ways at her childhood summer camp. Though I lacked the mind to gather where her mother was from, my informant is originally from California.

Context:

In summer camp, my informant says her mom learned to use the chant as a sort of password in order to get into other campers’ cabins, sit with people during meals, and participate in activities. That being said, I was able to record it during an interview for folklore collection.

Main piece:

“Hi-lo-eenie-meenie-kai-kai-oom-cha-cha-oh-pee-wah-wah-eedie-yidee-yodee-yoo-hoo”

Analysis:

I’m sure that my informant has remembered this piece her whole life because it has been reminiscent of her childhood (and because it sounds good rolling off the tongue), but the purpose it served at her mother’s summer camp allows us, as folklorists, to take a deeper look into the social lives of children. In acting as a password as a sort of key to participating in different social settings, the phrase likely created an ingroup and an outgroup which would have contributed to the children’s social hierarchy. It’s important to note, though, that my informant told me kids at this summer camp would all eventually learn the chant–after a few days of confusion followed by some practice. Thus, it must not have simply been a tool for exclusion, but a right of passage into becoming a recognized camp member.