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memo-
rates.
Carl Wilhelm von Sydow, who introduced this term, distinguished between
memorates and
fabulates,
which are fictional narratives (65–80). Most contempo-
rary legend specialists view memorates as part of the legend genre. Many children
and adolescents tell first-person narratives related to legends; stories about legend
trips (visits to haunted or otherwise extraordinary places featured in legends) usu-
ally describe the narrator’s own experiences.
“The Dialectics of the Legend” (1973), by Linda Dégh and Andrew Vázsonyi,
explains the legend’s interplay of belief, partial belief, and skepticism. Debate and
controversy help to keep the legend alive. Some young legend-tellers believe in
the truth of the stories they tell, while others do not. How do legends spread from
one group of people to another? In 1975, Linda Dégh and Andrew Vázsonyi pub-
lished their essay “The Hypothesis of Multi-Conduit Transmission in Folklore.”
According to their hypothesis, folklore moves through social conduits. A conduit
involves transmission of folklore from one interested person to another; some
people neither tell nor listen to a piece of folklore, but others promote its trans-
mission. Gary Alan Fine’s essay “Folklore Diffusion through Interactive Social
Networks: Conduits in a Preadolescent Community” (1979) applies the multi-
conduit hypothesis to preadolescent boys living in a Minnesota suburb. Examin-
ing two narratives—one about a broken window at a local school and another
about a child’s death after eating Pop Rocks candy—Fine concludes that folklore
spreads “only among sub-populations with particular interests or experience pat-
terns, or according to group structures or friendship networks” (122).
De
fi
nitions and Classi
fi
cations 41
The term
urban legend
became popular when Jan H. Brunvand published his
first collection of legends for a general readership,
Th
e Vanishing Hitchhiker
(1981).
This collection and others by Brunvand, including
Th
e Choking Doberman
(1984)
and
Th
e Baby Train
(1993), include stories told by adolescents. Some folklorists
prefer the term
contemporary legend,
which does not specify urban settings.
RITUALS
Children often practice rituals, which can be defined as repeated patterns of
behavior. Parents teach their children to follow certain rituals, such as bedtime
routines, special meals, and holiday observances (Zeitlin, Kotkin, and Baker
162–81). Without guidance from adults, children practice their own rituals to
make good things happen, initiate each other into clubs, celebrate holidays, and
add excitement to their daily lives.
Rituals to get a day off from school are common in parts of the United States
where heavy snowfall may cause a snow day. In upstate New York, children tell
each other that wearing white socks to bed will guarantee a good snowstorm;
hopeful children go to bed wearing snow-white tube socks. This ritual illustrates
the principle of sympathetic magic: like produces like. Another ritual to produce
snowstorms involves wearing pajamas inside-out or putting pajamas on back-
wards. Instead of a normal school day, with all of its challenges and frustrations,
children hope to get an “inside-out” day that involves staying home, sleeping late,
and having fun.
Initiation rituals emphasize the beginning of a new stage of life. Children have
developed various rituals to bring new members into secret clubs or other groups
in which adults have no involvement. Julius Cavero, a well-known graffiti artist
born in New Jersey in 1961, joined the adolescent gang known as the “Bronx
Enchanters” when he was in his early teens. To join the gang, he had to run be-
tween two lines of boys swinging belts and throwing punches. Once he had made
it through this “Apache line” without falling down, he was a member of the gang.
Later, when he decided to leave the Bronx Enchanters, Cavero had to undergo an
exit ritual: 10 lashes from a gang member’s belt (Cavero 12–13).
On Halloween, children practice rituals that they have learned from each
other. Trick-or-treating on Halloween night is derived from ritual begging in the
British Isles. Since the mid-1960s, children and adults have told stories about
Halloween tragedies that have led to discouragement of neighborhood trick-or-
treating (see the article “Halloween Poisonings”). Halloween is also associated
with divination rituals such as mirror gazing, during which a girl tries to see the
face of her future husband (Ellis 142–73).
Other rituals related to the supernatural can be practiced at any time of year.
Ouija boards, which date back to the time of Pythagoras in ancient Greece,
42 Children’s
Folklore
provide a means for ritualized communication with the dead. Séances require no
props; children sit in a circle, waiting for spirits’ messages. “Bloody Mary” rituals
involve summoning a spirit by repeating his or her name a certain number of
times. For more details regarding folklore of the supernatural, see chapter 4.
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