Children’s Folklore Recent Titles in Greenwood Folklore Handbooks Myth: a handbook



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NARRATIVES
Tales
Tales are relatively short, entertaining narratives that follow traditional pat-
terns. Stith Thompson, author of 
Th
 e Folktale
(1946), explains that traditional 
prose tales have been “handed down from generation to generation, either in 
writing or by word of mouth” (4). Older children tell tales to younger children
who in turn become members of the playground’s “older generation.”
Evelyn Pitcher and Ernst Prelinger analyze the narratives of very young chil-
dren in their book 
Children Tell Stories
(1963), which takes a psychoanalytic ap-
proach. Brian Sutton-Smith’s more recent study 
Th
e Folkstories of Children
(1981) 
presents stories told by children between the ages of 2 and 10. Identifying plot 
elements that indicate varying levels of conflict resolution, Sutton-Smith finds 
that children cope with challenges through storytelling.
Some of the most popular tales are those that begin in a scary or spooky way 
and end with a funny or surprising line. Folklore scholars have given such nar-
ratives different names. Sylvia Grider calls them “folktales with catch endings”; 
John M. Vlach calls them “humorous anti-legends,” while Simon J. Bronner pre-
fers “playful horror tales” (154 –59). When I did the fieldwork for my dissertation 
on preadolescent girls’ storytelling, I found that the girls with whom I worked 
preferred their own term, 
funny-scary story.
The two most common folktale pat-
terns for stories of this kind are Aarne-Thompson tale types 326, “The Youth 
Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is,” and 366, “The Man from the Gallows.”
Legends
Legends tell us about dangers and problems that may arise in our own lives. 
Linda Dégh, author of 
Legend and Belief,
explains that the legend is “an ideology-
sensitive genre par excellence.” Based on issues and fears arising from contem-
porary society, “the legend has power, the nature of which is unknown and 
dangerous” (5). Since the legend adapts quickly to changing times, its potential 
for meaning remains powerful.
When children stay away from home overnight, their sensitivity to the leg-
end’s threats increases. At slumber parties and residential camps and in other 
unfamiliar settings, children feel more vulnerable to the tragic circumstances 


40 Children’s 
Folklore
that legends portray. At camp, in particular, anxieties increase late at night. Who 
knows whether the sound of twigs breaking means the approach of a murderer, 
a ghost, or a harmless small animal? Folklorists’ studies of camp legends, such as 
James P. Leary’s “The Boondocks Monster of Camp Wapehani,” Lee Haring and 
Mark Breslerman’s “The Cropsey Maniac,” and my own “Cropsey at Camp,” 
have documented how children respond to such fearful stimuli. Simon J. Bron-
ner includes camp legends in 
American Children’s Folklore
(153 –54).
Folklorists have done more studies of camps than of other residential estab-
lishments where children tell legends. Jay Mechling’s “Children’s Folklore in Res-
idential Institutions” (1995) reminds us to consider various organizations that 
“make the young person a ‘ward’ of the adult caretakers”: orphanages, group 
homes, and detention centers (273). Bess Lomax Hawes’s “ ‘La Llorona’ in Juve-
nile Hall” (1968) shows how legends about a ghostly mother/murderer reflect 
the worries of teenage girls detained for truancy and sexual misbehavior. In Jesse 
Gelwicks’s “Redwood Grove: Youth Culture within a Group Home” (2002), story-
telling about boys’ past behavior follows legend-telling patterns. Institutions that 
provide medical treatment also serve as settings for storytelling, as Roberta Krell’s 
“At a Children’s Hospital” (1980) demonstrates.
Legends told in the first person (“This happened to me . . .”) are called 

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