Informant: Valerie is a 61-year-old, born and raised in Dorking, England. She moved to Pennsylvania at 40, and to San Diego at 45. She still regularly visits England, where all her family still live. 

Main Piece: “Something that you’re always supposed to do when there’s a thunderstorm is yell back at it. If you’re scared because it’s loud, you just yell back and you’ll scare the thunderstorm too. You won’t be scared anymore, and the thunderstorm will stop.

Background Information about the Performance: The informant was instructed to do so as a child by her parents, and would later pass it on to her own child. 

Context of Performance: The piece is told to frightened children to calm them down.

Thoughts: I have received this advice when I was a child and know that I was very reassured by it. It seems to be a way of both boosting confidence and of stopping the thunderstorm. The idea that one should mimic a natural event in order to stop it from occuring seems prominent in other folkloric beliefs as well.