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

Doorway to the Dead
When I was sixteen, my friend and I made a doorway in which we could “communicate” 
with the dead in the room. He had learned this from family in both Peru and Paraguay. We 
took six pens, each holding three so that we would be unable to move them ourselves 
without it being visible that we were doing so. We connected them at the tips to make 
a sort of rectangle or “doorway.” From here we were able to ask any spirits present “yes” 
or “no” questions. If the doorway contracted on itself it meant no, and if it expanded, it 

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92 Children’s 
Folklore
meant yes. From this we learned that it was indeed Nino [the ghost of the man who had 
died in the house] that was “living” in my room, and that he meant us no harm, just that 
he was looking or waiting for someone or something.
Jonathan Wickers, a 19-year-old resident of Flushing, New York, narrated this 
personal experience story in April 2005. His story shows how easily rituals related 
to the supernatural can travel from one country to another. In Peru and Paraguay, 
Jonathan’s friend learned a new way to communicate with the dead. The two 
friends believed that the ghost of Nino, a previous resident of the house already 
known to them as a mover of furniture, an opener of doors, and a breaker of glass 
light covers, had sent a message by moving the doorway to the dead. This ritual, 
similar to use of the Ouija board, reassured them that Nino was not dangerous.
MATERIAL CULTURE
Early Plant Lore
An ear-piercing whistle could be constructed from a willow branch, and a particularly 
disagreeable sound could be evoked by every boy, and (I must acknowledge it) by every 
girl, too, by placing broad leaves of grass—preferably the pretty striped ribbon-grass, or 
gardener’s garters—between the thumbs and blowing thereon.
Other skilful and girl-envied accomplishments of the boys I will simply name: making 
baskets and brooches by cutting or fi ling the furrowed butternut or the stone of a peach; 
also fairy baskets, Japanesque in workmanship, of cherry stones; manufacturing old-
women dolls of hickory nuts; squirt-guns and pop-guns of elderberry stems; pipes of 
horse-chestnuts, corn-cobs, or acorns, in which dried sweet-fern could be smoked; sweet-
fern or grape-stem or corn-silk cigars.
Alice Morse Earle included this summary of children’s mastery of plant lore in 
her book 
Child Life in Colonial Days
(390). This passage from the “Flower Lore” 
chapter of Earle’s book demonstrates how skillfully children in eighteenth- and 
nineteenth-century America created playthings from plants. Earle draws a line 
between girls’ and boys’ craftsmanship, finding boys to be better at making dolls, 
guns, pipes, baskets, and cigars. In another part of the “Flower Lore” chapter she 
mentions girls’ ability to make tiny tea sets from rose hips. This sharp distinction 
between girls’ and boys’ material culture mirrors gender roles of the time period 
that Earle describes. Girls were expected to take an interest in domestic pursuits 
indoors, while boys could wander freely and smoke with each other outside.
While contemporary children do not make as many plant creations as they 
did in colonial days, counselors at summer camps teach children nature lore, and 
rural families maintain certain traditions. Simon J. Bronner’s 
American Children’s 
Folklore
includes descriptions of hickory-bark whistles and spring guns made 

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Examples and Texts 93
from an elderberry bush or hickory wood, as well as slingshots and bull roarers 
made of sticks (202– 04).