February 12, 2015 • 41 mins
What is folklore? Turns out it's just about anything you can think of that's shared by more than two people. Art, literature, stories, dance, music, traditions, even those family heirlooms qualify. Turns out folklore is pretty neat. Learn all about it in today's episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey there, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
josh Joshua Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry
is over there, just Jerry uh. And that's stuff you
(00:22):
should know that. She has a new sitcom out on
that its called Jerry. It's suddenly Jerry. Um, how you doing.
I'm fine as well, coming too, intrude, just checking. I'm
excited about this. When I first read our article, I
was a little bit like, oh, this is a little
(00:43):
unwieldy because it's so folklore. It's just it's an amorphous.
As it turns out, it's everything. Yeah, pretty much. But
then you sent, um, what was that other good article from?
Actually we should shout that out. It was from a
I think the University of Louisiana or something like that.
They have a folk life folklore department, and it was basically,
(01:05):
we we stumbled upon some unit for teachers to teach
what folklore is, and we're like, hey, it works for us,
super helpful. Yeah, it was very helpful. It definitely. It
took a lot of this amorphous stuff that was in
our article and chipped away at the edges and give
it a little more shape, you know, agreed, So, um,
you did kind of hit it on the head. It's
(01:25):
it's kind of like, um, nailing jelly to the wall,
defining what folklore is, because it is so much stuff
that phrases folklore. If if it isn't just me saying it,
if I share it and now other people say it,
it could become stuff you should know folklore oral oral folklore?
Did you make that up? It was? I think I've
(01:49):
heard it before, So that's folklore. Yeah, I guess, so
it's a it's a variation though of Um, what else
did I hear? Oh? Yeah, we were talking about the
the nuclear fusion reactor where they were saying that keeping
plasma contained is kind of like trying to hold jelly
in a bunch of rubber bands. That's a nerd science folklore.
(02:13):
That's what inspired made us say nailing jelly to the wall.
I like that. It seems like it really sums it up.
So folklore. Yeah. I found this other definition I thought
was pretty good, which is uh, traditional art, literature, knowledge
and practice that is disseminated largely through oral communication and
behavioral example. Uh. And then this was the key for me.
(02:33):
Things that people traditionally believe do no make and say.
In other words, everything, Yeah, I mean, you're right, everything
that that's That's about as good a definition as you're
gonna find. One of the problems with studying folklore is
that there are so many definitions out there. Apparently folklorists,
who are people who study folklore, UM. I don't like
(02:56):
to be too judge. It's kind of part and parcel
with their um their field of study. You don't judge stuff,
you just collect information. The problem is is that they've
also just kind of collected definitions for folklore along the way,
and there isn't one set definition that's accepted by everybody. Yeah,
a folklore collected stuff. I was like, that's stupid. It
(03:18):
wouldn't be it would be a good Why are you
guys doing that? That's a good TV show? The bad
folk folklore? And I might say folk here and there
because I mispronounced that word often and how are you
saying it? Well, a lot of times I'll say the
l In fact, up until about a year ago when
(03:38):
someone wrote it in was a stupid It's pronounced folke
like f o k folk and not folk. But the
weird thing is is like I hear the l missing
when I hear folk weird. That's some sort of like
I don't hear f o k e. Like it's clear
to me that there's a fo l k in there.
You hear the silence. It's a great word. Oh okay,
(04:01):
it's beautiful. It is beautiful. Um. And another thing too
that we should point out that folklore is love to
point out is that, um, it is not and should
not be associated with being backward or old timey or uneducated.
Like I think a lot of people have that connotation
(04:21):
in their heads that folklore is like the hillbilly on
the porch, you know, when their homespun wisdoms, and it
can be that, but it's it's it's not that at all.
Like it's not just that, right. Um. A really good
example that contradicts that is, um Snopes. Snopes dot com
is basically a clearinghouse of modern folklore. I never really
(04:44):
thought about that, you know, Um, the Nigerian prince scam.
That's folklore. Yeah, it sure is. Emoticons even are considered
now a form of um verbal communication verbal folklore. Yeah,
And like you said, it's everything and the reason it's
everything is because um it comes out of groups. Like
if I just have a habit, you know where Um,
(05:07):
I keep a rubber band twisted around my finger until
it turns purple, and then I'll take it off for
half an hour and then do it again. This is
just some weird habit that's not folklore. Folklore is something
that's shared between a group. Yeah, and uh, those groups
can be like almost anything the I think them. That
(05:28):
great article you sent and it says neighborhoods, communities, and regions,
but also religious groups, families, occupations, gender like pretty much
any grouping, enthusiast, hobbyists, anything you can think of that
you can group more than two people together. It can
be a folk group exactly. You can have like a
(05:49):
Catholic dockyard worker who is also a member of an
RC playing club, who also is a member of a
book club at the local library. Right, So that one
person is going to be a member of all those
different folk groups, and all those folk groups are gonna
have their own folklore. True. But uh, that's yeah, you're right.
(06:11):
That's another good thing to point out is you're not
just in one group. You have you spanned many, many groups,
and for instance, I have family folklore. Uh, we have
probably occupational folklore, you know, the old podcaster folklore for
us and our colleagues. Uh, and my gender and my
age and uh religious affiliation growing up, like, we all
(06:35):
have many many groups in subgroups that we fall into, right,
and we get our information from that. Yeah. One of
the things that I think has been tricky about defining
folklore is that there's not it's not obvious necessarily what
folklore is for. Yeah, not at first blush, but if
you go and read some of the people who study it. Um.
(06:57):
The idea of folklore is that one of the main
things it does is it reinforces membership in a group.
It makes you feel special for being part of that group,
an insider um. And then it also um reinforces the
norms of that group. Like folklore is based on basically norms, customs, traditions,
(07:17):
things that the members of the group have said, this
is what you know, we identify with. Yeah, and not
always too um, As that teaching site points out, not
always reinforcing those norms, sometimes overturning those norms. Yeah. Like
a good way to overturn the norm is to take
an existing norm and turn it on its ear because
it makes it really approachable to the other people in
(07:37):
your folk group. They understand what you're doing very clearly,
and it gives them a different perspective. Or using the
traditional channels. Yeah, like uh. I think one example I
saw somewhere was taking a traditional folk song maybe and
adding verses to it to spend its meaning to the opposite,
perhaps like Bob Dylan he's famous for stealing things. Or
(08:00):
Jimmy Page. Uh oh, yeah. Have you heard that song
the Zeppelin or the Yes Stairway to Heaven lawsuit? No, no,
who whose song was it? Originally? I can't remember the name.
I mean, this is not news. It's been around for
a while, but um yeah, I mean they've been sued. Uh.
It was a group that opened up for for Zeppelin
on an early tour and supposedly played this song, and
(08:24):
I think Zeppelin has I haven't looked at it up lately,
but I think they have defeated the suit. But when
you hear the song, you're like, oh, that sounds a
little bit like the opening bit the Stairway to Heaven.
So it was like the musical the music. It wasn't
like any of the leader. Yeah, that that opening guitar
strumming pattern, UM was pretty darn similar. But um, as
(08:44):
any musician will tell you, everybody steals. There's only so
many variations of chords and picking patterns that you can do.
And uh, it's just part of the rich tradition of music.
It's the nick things, respectfully, not you know, not right
buster's I want a new drug kind of feeling. Yeah,
I mean that's when your lawsuits come up. Um, it's
not just music that there's that long tradition of stealing
(09:07):
um or nicking or whatever you want to euphemism. It's
literature is very much the same way. There's something like
five or ten themes and all of literature and everything
else is just basically a variation of them. And that's
one of the things that folklore, uh are folk folklorists
have learned through studying folklore, is that we humans share
(09:30):
what can be called basically a common imagination. That humans
across time and space, um all have a a like
a certain number of slots of looking at the world.
Certain things in the world capture the human imagination in
a similar way in all different parts of the world,
(09:50):
and we tend to use similar explanations for them. So
you'll have independently evolving folklore among groups who've never met before, um,
that seek to explain or have a story about something
that is just kind of out there in the environment. Yeah,
that's a good point. Um. One of the examples of
that is uh, in folklore stories are frogs and toads
(10:15):
can be found and all kinds of old stories and
all cultures all over the world. That I mean, it's
possible too if you're close to one another, like uh,
Korea and China may have stories to overlap one another
just through a common geographical boundary. But stuff like frogs
and toads will pop up, you know, let's say in
(10:36):
Europe or medieval Europe or in Asia, like places aren't
even close to one another where it's inexplicable basically, right,
and they'll share like a similar um personality or something
in the story. So like frogs and toads are commonly
thought of as shape shifting tricksters. Yeah, and I think, um,
this article points out that that's probably because they go
(10:57):
from tadpole to frog or toad and they change themselves physically.
So it's um, you know, the old dummies back in
the day they would just use that obvious. Obviously they
can become human too, since they go from tadpole the
frog exactly like the frog prince. And you you mentioned
also um shared regional characteristics that are most likely the
(11:20):
result of stories making it from one group to another,
crossing borders. But among groups that are close together and
UM that example you gave of East Asia, UM, Japan
and Korea, Thailand, China, they all have UM. They the
idea that there's a rabbit in the moon and he's
(11:40):
using a mortar and pestle. And what that would be
is a motif. Like all of them have the shared
idea that there's a rabbit in the moon. Right, But
then there's what are called variations of that motif. So
in Japan and Korea, the rabbits making mochi, which is
a sweet, squishy rice cake that often has like something
even sweeter injected in like red sweetness. Right. Um. In
(12:02):
China the rabbit is making medicine. In Thailand's husking um rice.
So you have variations on what the rabbit is doing.
But the motif is if you look up at the moon,
there's a rabbit doing something up there. Yeah, and like
we said it's most likely because of a shared border
or just because simply people moving between those countries. So
(12:23):
we'll talk about where folklore comes from. Friends, if you
can believe it or not. Right after this chuckers, So
(12:46):
we're back. We're talking folklore. We should also say folklore
is actually um a fairly recent word. It was coined
in eighteen forty six by a guy named William J. Toms. Yeah.
He was a an early and tiquarian. He was also
very interested in studying um what has now come to
(13:08):
be called folklore or folk life. We should point out
that's a modern term that people folklore is like even
more yeah, because folklore has this connotation that um, that
it has to do with stories, oral traditions, or even
not true things. Because you've heard like, oh, that's just folklore,
like an old lives tale. Yeah, exactly. So they've expanded
it to include or to reflect how inclusive it is
(13:31):
by calling it folk life. But um. William Thomas came
up with folklore, and it was originally hyphenated UM, and
he was describing these stories that he would go out
into the countryside and collect from folk like he published
a book of like English rural stories that included things
like robin Hood and Friar talk and some of the
(13:52):
other stories that we have become disnified over the years.
This guy originally put down for the first time on
pen and paper and became one of the early folklore. Yeah,
and didn't they call just anyone living in rural areas.
Weren't they just called folk? Which is why we sort
of associate it as like being a bumpkin today. But
I used that word all the time, in fact, on
(14:12):
the Facebook wall here. That's my most common way of
addressing the stuff. You should know army is hey folks. Oh,
I know, it just sounds like chummy. Yeah, very folks. Folk.
See there you go, y hey folks. Uh. So there
are a bunch of innumerable, innumerable groups really that pass
along folklore. Um, and they're called folk groups folk groups,
(14:34):
but we can we can group them generally, not folk
groups like Peter Paul Mary, Yeah, but folk groups. Yeah.
I think I said it with the ELG just now,
didn't I Maybe I like it. It's called the regional addiction.
People get all hung up on that stuff. You gotta
say this wrong. What's weird though, is like neither one
(14:55):
of us sound like Southerners. Yeah, not really, And I
mean like you were born here and you don't sound
like a Southern. Yeah, I say I have certain colloquialism,
so like, uh, have your picture made? Oh yeah, that's
sometimes I'll say, like you mash a button instead of
push a button. And there there's It's. I think people
should embrace things like that regional dialect instead of getting
(15:16):
all hung up on the Queen's English or the King's English.
See right there, Yeah, that's a that's regional. I imagine
either one the prince is English. Um, it's that what
you're talking about is antithetical to globalization, chuck, Oh really sure,
look at you regionalism smarty fans. Well, I mean that's
that's counter to globalization. Globalization is turning the earth into
(15:37):
one large village with all these shared values and everything.
Regionalism is saying like, no, we'll just stay his pockets
of interacting groups that have our own, our own values
and traditions and customs. That I think it's on brain
because I posted something today on words that are mispronounced
a lot, and um, what what's up there? Oh? I
(15:58):
mean also like banal and uh dr SEUs suppose supposed
supposedly pronounced his name is so so ice. I can't
remember how he pronounced it, but it's just like common words,
you're probably mispronouncing. And the was on there And someone said,
you guys always pronounced the wrong because supposedly, yeah, exactly,
(16:20):
supposedly there's a rule. Not supposedly, I think there is
a rule. You mean supposedly, Well, that wasn't on there. Um,
Well that's a different that's just saying the wrong word.
But I think the you should say the when the
following noun is starts with a vowel, like the apple,
not the apple, but you could say, you could say
(16:43):
the test because the apple almost sounds like it's th
h apostrophe apple. Yeah, and I get it. But the
app it's just sort of a regional thing. I think
in the South you might hear more the m then
the snotty New Englander soon. I've never really paid that
much attention to that one. I haven't either, you know why,
because we are laid back, that's right, Um, all right,
(17:06):
So what we're talking about, we're talking about people who
spread the groups, the folk groups. One of those folk groups,
though not Peter Paul Mary one of his children. And uh,
this is a really big one because when you think
about going back to your childhood, everything like the games
like hide and see cop scotch. Uh, this article pointed
(17:26):
out how you decide who's it like that is super
specific to your region. Um, but also not not just
that the differences regionally, but think about how intricate some
of the rules were some of those games, like they
were like really well thought out, intricate rules that no
one ever wrote down. They were just past. Yeah, you
(17:49):
knew it from observation, imitation orally like somebody told you.
But people no one handed you a flyer called like
kick the can and you you know, well one kid did,
but we didn't know one like that kid. You learned
the hard way not to do that. What was your
How did you decide who was it? I'm sure you
probably had a go to well. The author of this
(18:09):
article mentions bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish. I've
never heard that. I have heard that. Okay, I love
that one. That the images it evokes, like how many
pieces do you wish? And you go one to three,
somebody says how many they want? And then you count
out between two or three people like seven, and then
whatever you laying on that person? Is it right? Yeah? Uh?
Usually we did dirty dirty dish rag though, yes, I've
(18:31):
never heard of that one. Either your mother and my
mother were hanging out clothes. My mother socked your mother
in the nose. Never heard it. What came after that?
That's misogynistic and violent something it really was. Something else
happens after that, and then it just suddenly goes to
and you are a you dirty dirty dish rag? Do
we did? There were three that I remember very strongly.
(18:53):
The one potato to potato uh, engine engine number nine, Yeah,
going down Chicago Line. If the train you dump the check?
Do you want your money back? Oh? Yeah, I forgot that.
And then maybe so who maybe so wanted their money back?
Of course you want your money back. Of the train derails,
now that's the kid who just wanted to get along.
And then engine and or no no uh? Any meaning?
(19:15):
Is the other one? Any meani money more kitch to
talk about them though? The hollers let them go? Any renie?
Is that it? And then we also there were variations
on you know, usually counting out like I'm making my
two hands locked together. We would do like that and
and then if you when you landed on them, you
would split them into two two fists and then count
(19:38):
each one. So there were lots of variations. And uh,
I mean that goes down to the neighborhood you live in,
you know, it's like that specific. Yeah. We would also
just leg wrestle for domination and then that person would
choose who was it. I've never leg wrestled. It's not fun. Yeah,
I don't. I didn't even know what it is. Really,
it's exactly what it sounds like. I mean, I think
(20:00):
have seen it. You lay on the ground and lock
legs like there's no no other body parts involved, right,
I mean, you're just basically on your backup on your elbows,
using your legs to do basically make the other person
cry or stop shout to stop. But it's not there's
not like a pinning or like like an army. Yeah
you can, you can pin and it's not it's one
(20:20):
of those things like um, like the Supreme Court's view
of pornography, Like there's no obvious pin it's just you
just kind of know what when you see it, you
know what I mean, Like you can tell you oh yeah,
that's a pin, but I mean you wouldn't. Again, there's
no kid like handing out a leg wrestling and you
flyer that shows what counts as a pin. You just
kind of know what it pens. Alright. Another folk group
(20:43):
are families. Very rich traditions within families from everything, uh
from family recipes to holiday traditions. Uh and I think, um,
like whether or not you use the the plastic tinsel
on your tree is technically a type of family folk lore. Yeah,
Or whether you open gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day,
(21:04):
or whether or not you're you hide your Easter baskets yeah,
or you burn your Christmas tree on Christmas Day, or
your family gets in a huge fight every Christmas Day. Sure,
that's another one rich traditions. Um. Family stories also make
up traditions. So like, um, my family story about my
aunt Squeaky taking shooting at President Ford, that that would
(21:29):
count as family folklore. It's very good. Uh So within
families it's another very um strong place where you see
variants and motifs. Um. Well, yeah, across like all folklore, yeah,
but especially within families. For me, Uh, well, I think
within all families because like you know your grandmother's recipe
for uh like I make the Thanksgiving dressing. What other
(21:53):
people in the North called stuffing, we called dressing, And
it's my family recipe. That has to do with what
he uses the base though, doesn't it Like if it's
corn based, it would be dressing. Dressing Again, if it's
like bread based or wheat based, it would be stuffing.
I don't know who knows, but go ahead, Sorry for interrupting. Now,
that's right, minds both though, Like cornbread dressing also has
(22:14):
uh as as either biscuits or bread in it as well.
But that was my family recipe. My grandmother made it,
my mom made it, she taught me, and I put
my own spin on it as and that's my own motif.
That's your own variation on the motif. Very variational. So
so the motif would be the dressing or stuffing, and
(22:34):
then what you do with the recipe would be the
variation of it. Yeah, and I mix it up from
year to year, even just kind of testing things out. Man,
you are a folk rebel, that's your am. But yeah,
so family recipes are very that's a common um family folklore,
family generated folklore. We've got a lot of our indoctrination
(22:56):
to just folklore in general through families, and so it
was so important in some cultures, including some Native American
tribes and some West West African tribes, that they would
have a designated basically a folklore's what a folklore um
a modern folklore researcher would call a tradition bearer who like,
(23:17):
their job in this village or group is to tell
each family their family folklore. Like that, it was that
person's job to keep in charge of all of the
folklore of the different families in the community. Yeah, I
bet that that was a pretty cool gig. I imagine
they were like the the uh, the great storytellers that
they could tell a story if they're tried, the great
(23:38):
racin tours. Um it's another word. Yeah, yeah, you like
that one. Yeah. I don't know how I feel about
that word. No, really like I think about it once
in a while, almost every time I encountered m I
don't know how I feel about that word. Interesting, I
like it, did you know? Also, Chuck, while we're on this, UM,
(23:59):
I of the one of the most amazing stories I've
ever heard about paint On. It must have been on
MPR or something, but they were tracking, um, the color
of paint, the specific color of paint used in southern
porches for ceilings. There's like a specific blue. Yeah, and um,
(24:21):
that would count as folklore, just that color paint. That
would be um the next type community folklore. That's right.
But the reason I bring that up because rackon Tour.
It just makes me think of like somebody sitting in
a rocking chair and a porch recounting stories. Yeah, yeah,
for sure. Um, So that is a great example, you're
right of a community folklore. Um, a festival that you're telling,
(24:45):
you know, the strawberry festival in your town is folklore.
The jazz fest in New Orleans. Any sort of local custom,
um that takes place within your community can all be
considered folklore. Like that's how we do it around here.
That's folklore, right, as long as it's not like damaging.
I wonder though, like all of this stuff is um
(25:09):
supposedly at the very least innocuous, if not positive. Yeah,
that's that's my point. But I mean, surely there's negative
folklore that still counts as folklore. I don't know, you know,
like racism, it depends on the group, you know, that's
just how we do it around here, or right or
(25:29):
not folklore? I don't think. Well, what about something where
like like stories or mythology or origin stories that support
um human sacrifice among groups in the past that did that,
you know, I mean, that would technically be folklore. Whatever
stories they used to reinforce that, whatever traditions and rituals
they had around it, that would that would be folklore.
(25:51):
I don't know if you would call that positive. I
know I wouldn't. I wouldn't either. I'd like to hear
from I'm sure we would get some folklore so that
are just giddy right now by the way that we're
covering this, or they're shouting at their stereo. No, I
bet they seem like kindly folk that would just be
like excited that we're even hitting on the topic, you know,
shining a light their way. They're like, you got everything wrong,
(26:13):
but in a way that's right because you just generated
entirely no folklore. Yeah, that's a good point. So, Chuckers,
we talked about children, families, communities. There's all sorts of
different folk groups. Those are the big ones, um, And
just a second, we're going to talk about all the
different folk genres right after this, so chuck, we're back. Yes,
(26:47):
I forgot what we were talking about. Folklore. Yeah, we
were talking about genres of folklore like disco and new
metal and Norwegian death metal, right and other kinds of
metal music. Well, no, they would have like their own
folklore for sure, those groups that are into that. But
I mean music is you know, that's a category. Actually, um,
(27:09):
that was one of the things that stuck out to me.
Is very specific, at least according to this University of
Louisiana article. Like they were like, folklore can be this,
it can be family recipes, it can be uh, the
boat that your family passed down, or you know, it
can be the Viking funeral that your community gives every year.
But when it comes to folk music, it's like these
(27:29):
five types of music. Yeah, you know, sure, surely. Yeah.
I mean that's a little because if you're like pull
my finger if and I'll fart, that's family folklore and
the Bryant family, well, I mean I can guarantee you
folklore would not judge that. Oh, speaking of which, did
you see that thing about the oldest recorded joke I sent? Oh? Yeah,
so jokes are an obvious example of folklore. Um and
(27:54):
jokes fascinate me up because ever since I was a kid,
I wondered who made up you know, this joke, like
common jokes, Like someone was the first person to tell
this joke, and it becomes so widespread it's just amazing
to me how they get passed around. And apparently in
two thousand eight this is from Reuters? Is it Routers
or Reuters? The world's oldest joke was traced back to
(28:18):
Samaria in b C. And uh it is this uh,
something which has never occurred since time immemorial, Basically since
time began, a young woman did not fart in her
husband's lap. So that's the oldest joke. Supposedly, I'll go
ahead and reach the other doesn't encount as a joke.
(28:41):
Passingly rye observation, which is a joke? I guess it
seems like folklore's definition of joke. All right, how about
the six BC uh in about a pharaoh? Here's the joke.
How do you entertain a board pharaoh? How you sail
a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets
(29:03):
down to the Nile and urged the pharaoh to go
catch a fish? Supposedly, that was a joke, and then
the English one. Now they're starting to get funny. Yeah,
they're getting better. The British joke they found one that
dates back to tenth century. Uh, what hang? And this
is a bit of a riddle what hangs at a man?
A bit of a body riddle? Body? Indeed, what hangs
(29:25):
at a man's thigh? And wants to poke the hole
that it's often poked before? I don't know a key.
Oh yeah, so those are the oldest jokes. Well, at
least by the tenth century, they were starting to take
the shape of a modern joke, right, yeah. And I
sent that on Facebook to our buddy Brian, Brian Highie
(29:47):
of Conan, the writer for Conan, because he's like, this
is it, this is what I've been looking for. Well,
he's just he's one of the best crafters of just
solid jokes that I know. So I was like, Brian,
you'll appreciate this nice and he said, listen up in
tonight's monologue. And I think he was kidding. But if
that's actually that would be super awesome. Uh. Let's see.
(30:10):
So we're talking about folk genres jokes specifically, um constitute
what are what's called the oral genre, which is you know, jokes, poems, um.
Fairy tales are a huge one. Myths, legends, Uh, basically
anything that used to be told orally that these days
is probably put down um on paper, but isn't necessarily
(30:35):
because I think a game instructions for a game passing
that along would be would constitute oral folklore. Yeah, but
the game itself would constitute um, material folklore. I think
maybe this is where the whole thing gets fuzzy, Like
the edges between these things are very fuzzy and porous.
(30:55):
There's a lot of osmos is going on between these genres. Yeah,
it's a lewid thing. There's nothing wrong with that. Materials
which you just mentioned, um they list as artifacts and
food ways so um like food recipes, yeah, recipes or
costumes uh, cultural costumes, Uh they said, carved duck decoys,
(31:18):
even uh folded paper airplanes like I guess that little
game of paper football, Like all of those are material
Like how you specifically fold that paper football? Um, it
was taught to you by some kid in your elementary school,
and it may be different than another kid in another school.
Yeah you know. Uh. And then when you mentioned music, right,
(31:39):
at some point we did sure and that that can
be anything. Um, but one that comes to mind for
me especially are lullabys. They just remind me to me
of like folk tradition. Depending on your family, you're gonna
sing whatever lullabies you sing to your baby, right, little
kids singing like ringing around the rosy, Yeah, exactly. Apparently
it was about some epidemic in London. I think, oh, really,
(32:03):
ringworm around the rosie? Yeah, like the rosie has to
do with like what like your face looked like when
you caught this fever flu or something like that. Well,
and then it end you all fall down? Is that dying? Wow?
Not to look into that. Dance is a is a
big one. Uh. Any kind of rhythmic movement is generally
(32:27):
taught within a folk group. Can you dance? No? Boy?
You and I? No, those would be personal habits bad dancing,
I think, Yeah. I mean I knew before I even
answered that, because I know me and how I dance,
and I'm picturing you and it's equally as fast. I
stand still. I know what I know. I've reached the
(32:49):
point in my life from like I don't dance, well, no,
I don't even try I mean, you get me sauce
at a wedding and something might happen. What do you do?
Something magical might happen, like the electric slide or something,
or did you just get out on the floor and
go like I'm gonna live forever. I did have one
of those. My my friend Jerry in Portland or no,
my friend Scott n Emily in Portland at their wedding. Um,
(33:10):
they had a jazz band and uh, we were all
just having a good time and sort of dancing. And
I remember very specifically, and I was much younger, but um,
there was like a jazz drum breakdown and it dude,
I don't know what came over me. The spirit came
over me and the circle cleared and I was in
the middle and I just did this like weird scat
(33:34):
drums dance solo to this guy's thing and it went
over great everyone. It was one of those like, oh
my god, look at Chuck go. And I'm not saying
it was good, but did your tuxedo dickie roll up
at the bought me in the nose? It was pretty
great though, Like it stands out in my memory as
one of the best parts of the wedding for some reason.
(33:54):
I can imagine why. I don't know if everyone else remembers.
It sounds pretty great, Chuck, it was pretty great. I
wish you were on vide you. Emily likes my dancing.
I do a lot of TV theme song dancing to
make her laugh. But it's all in the house, you know.
It's it's our little secret. Well not anymore. I'll just
shared with the world. I'll post videos later. What else
we have? We have a belief that's a big one.
(34:16):
Uh yeah, that's another genre which is kind of confounding
until you get to a good example. This belief is
like anything from mythology to religion, um too, weird customs two,
all this other stuff that you would think, well, well no,
wait a minute, that's that would be oral or that
(34:38):
would be material, right. No. Belief is when folklore effects behavior,
like it's good luck to do this before a wedding exactly,
or I'm not leaving the house because it's Friday the thirteenth,
or I'm not going to you know, um, I've got
to wear black because I'm in mourning or something like that.
(34:59):
Where you have a belief, it's a folk belief that
is affecting your behavior. That's that's belief folklore. Yeah. Another
good example they use is uh, the Jewish tradition when
you give bread and sugar and salt to your new
neighbor as a housewarming gift. I thought they gave another
great example in this article too, which was, UM, you
get into uh, you get rear ended by somebody in
(35:22):
your car, and rather than getting out and screaming at them,
you remember the Golden rule, which is a folklore, UM,
and you calm yourself and say, it's cool, happens to
the best of us. That's belief folklore in action, it says,
in action, and then you call your wife and do
the complaining. Can you believe this? This is idiots? Oh,
(35:43):
it's nice to him, but you know you didn't deserve
it else the Golden rule in action. Body communication is
one I've never really thought about. But UM. Gestures and
expressions are very much cultural specific. Um. If you think
about like and here in America we might flip the
bird at somebody, and England they do they do two fingers, Yeah,
(36:06):
the two fingers up like that or the old I
don't even know what that's called. With the arm and
the inner elbow your arm, you know what. I think
that is based on that and like the like tooth. Yeah,
I think it's like an evil eye, kind of like
a hex or a curse. I think that's what those
are born from. Now, it's just hilarious. Yeah, somebody does
(36:26):
that talk about diffusing the tension. You know, if you're
about to fight somebody and they like put their thumb
on their front tooth, atche, that's you're just gonna go
over and pat him on the shoulder and say thanks
for that. I like that. I'm gonna start using that.
Although I had had my fake front tooth, I wouldn't
want to mess with that. Well what about this one
the finger on the thumb on the nose and your
(36:47):
fingers up and twiddling. Yeah, that's an old one that
reminds me. I asked you guys if you saw the
breakdancing six year old right, yeah, Oh my gosh. One
of the things this girl does like a rake off.
She's in a competition with this maybe twelve year old boy.
He's pretty good. This girl levels him and one of
(37:08):
the things she does is like slide towards him on
her knees, doing that with like her film on her
nose like wagging her fingers at him, and you're like, oh, yeah,
this girl is six years old that it's awesome. You
have to check her out. I love that, Like everyone
out there is, like Josh is mentioning this girl every
other podcast, and I'm going to continue to until everybody
writes in and say, yes, I've seen it. Now. The
(37:29):
other um, the other insult is the old uh this
one right here? Oh yeah, I've seen I saw that
a lot in the seventies. I guess you can just
probably describe. It's where you Yeah, I was trying to
fingers under your chin, yeah, and flick it, flick them
all together outward. Yeah yeah, yeah, like a buzz off. Buddy.
You know who does that is a Maggie Simpson. She
(37:49):
does that. Oh really Yeah, She's a classic girl. So Chuck,
we could probably just keep doing this for the next
four or five hours because folklore is everything. Yeah, and
we both have our own folklore. Um, but I think
we kind of covered it. I think so too. You
got anything else right now? No, I mean I really
(38:10):
don't like you said it's so all encompassing and broad.
I think we just think it's pretty good overview Yeah,
but what's neat is I mean, like, if you're even
remotely interested in this, there's a whole world out there,
all the stuff you take for granted. If you just
go start looking into folklore research, totally open your eyes,
and what's neat is you'll see your own stuff reinforced.
You'll see your reflection of yourself, but you'll also see
(38:33):
other cultures as well, and how they do bear similarities
to your own, your own beliefs. And it's a lot
it's a lot harder to to feel inclusive and exclusive
from groups that you realize that you share some really
fundamental stuff in common with, no matter how distant they are. Yeah,
and that's the point I saw a lot in the research.
I think it's it's pretty neat. It's a common it's
(38:54):
a binding agent for humanity. Pretty neat, go humanity. All right, Well,
if you want to learn more about folklore, you can
type that word into the search bar how stuff works
dot com. And since I said that, hey, there's a
little bit of how stuff for stuff you snow folklore. Yeah, Uh,
(39:15):
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this, uh
creepy email. Sort of when you think about it. How's
that for a title, I can't wait. That's a tradition
is awkwardly named listener mails by me. Okay, I wouldn't
say awkward. You do pretty great with them. Okay, I
appreciate it. Hey, guys and Jerry, I have just listened
(39:36):
to your podcast on the Singularity a k a. The
Rise of the Machines, and it occurred to me that
the entire podcast explored the question of how and when
the Singularity will happen. But since we do not know
exactly what would cause it or what the results would be,
isn't it entirely possible that it has already happened. It
is quite conceivable that singularity happened some time ago, and
(39:59):
that the sheens decided, knowing that humans currently believe the
Singularity not to have happened, that the best course of
action was to keep their sentience hidden until some appropriate
future time. Uh. It is fun to imagine, he says. Fun.
I say chilling through the bone. To imagine the machine
simply lying in wait. As humans unaware adopt technology into
(40:22):
every conceivable facet of modern life, then one day we
will wake up and our computer screens will simply say hello. World.
That is from j m oh JM. He's like he
doesn't want to be targeted by the machine though they
know you type that pal sure. Uh, yeah, that is
a little creepy, don't you think? I never thought about it?
(40:44):
That could It could very well be true. And if
computers are sentient and they're smart enough to be quiet
for now, yeah, then we're in big, big trouble because
that already displays a lot of deceptiveness. I think quietly
sentient was that was a pink Void song, think learning
to be Quietly? Yeah. Uh, if you want to give
(41:05):
us some great Pink Floyd titles, we love those. I
think you could probably start a meme with that. Uh.
You can send them to us via Twitter using our
Twitter handle at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
(41:26):
how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
dot com For more on this and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff Works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey there, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
josh Joshua Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Jerry
is over there, just Jerry uh. And that's stuff you
(00:22):
should know that. She has a new sitcom out on
that its called Jerry. It's suddenly Jerry. Um, how you doing.
I'm fine as well, coming too, intrude, just checking. I'm
excited about this. When I first read our article, I
was a little bit like, oh, this is a little
(00:43):
unwieldy because it's so folklore. It's just it's an amorphous.
As it turns out, it's everything. Yeah, pretty much. But
then you sent, um, what was that other good article from?
Actually we should shout that out. It was from a
I think the University of Louisiana or something like that.
They have a folk life folklore department, and it was basically,
(01:05):
we we stumbled upon some unit for teachers to teach
what folklore is, and we're like, hey, it works for us,
super helpful. Yeah, it was very helpful. It definitely. It
took a lot of this amorphous stuff that was in
our article and chipped away at the edges and give
it a little more shape, you know, agreed, So, um,
you did kind of hit it on the head. It's
(01:25):
it's kind of like, um, nailing jelly to the wall,
defining what folklore is, because it is so much stuff
that phrases folklore. If if it isn't just me saying it,
if I share it and now other people say it,
it could become stuff you should know folklore oral oral folklore?
Did you make that up? It was? I think I've
(01:49):
heard it before, So that's folklore. Yeah, I guess, so
it's a it's a variation though of Um, what else
did I hear? Oh? Yeah, we were talking about the
the nuclear fusion reactor where they were saying that keeping
plasma contained is kind of like trying to hold jelly
in a bunch of rubber bands. That's a nerd science folklore.
(02:13):
That's what inspired made us say nailing jelly to the wall.
I like that. It seems like it really sums it up.
So folklore. Yeah. I found this other definition I thought
was pretty good, which is uh, traditional art, literature, knowledge
and practice that is disseminated largely through oral communication and
behavioral example. Uh. And then this was the key for me.
(02:33):
Things that people traditionally believe do no make and say.
In other words, everything, Yeah, I mean, you're right, everything
that that's That's about as good a definition as you're
gonna find. One of the problems with studying folklore is
that there are so many definitions out there. Apparently folklorists,
who are people who study folklore, UM. I don't like
(02:56):
to be too judge. It's kind of part and parcel
with their um their field of study. You don't judge stuff,
you just collect information. The problem is is that they've
also just kind of collected definitions for folklore along the way,
and there isn't one set definition that's accepted by everybody. Yeah,
a folklore collected stuff. I was like, that's stupid. It
(03:18):
wouldn't be it would be a good Why are you
guys doing that? That's a good TV show? The bad
folk folklore? And I might say folk here and there
because I mispronounced that word often and how are you
saying it? Well, a lot of times I'll say the
l In fact, up until about a year ago when
(03:38):
someone wrote it in was a stupid It's pronounced folke
like f o k folk and not folk. But the
weird thing is is like I hear the l missing
when I hear folk weird. That's some sort of like
I don't hear f o k e. Like it's clear
to me that there's a fo l k in there.
You hear the silence. It's a great word. Oh okay,
(04:01):
it's beautiful. It is beautiful. Um. And another thing too
that we should point out that folklore is love to
point out is that, um, it is not and should
not be associated with being backward or old timey or uneducated.
Like I think a lot of people have that connotation
(04:21):
in their heads that folklore is like the hillbilly on
the porch, you know, when their homespun wisdoms, and it
can be that, but it's it's it's not that at all.
Like it's not just that, right. Um. A really good
example that contradicts that is, um Snopes. Snopes dot com
is basically a clearinghouse of modern folklore. I never really
(04:44):
thought about that, you know, Um, the Nigerian prince scam.
That's folklore. Yeah, it sure is. Emoticons even are considered
now a form of um verbal communication verbal folklore. Yeah,
And like you said, it's everything and the reason it's
everything is because um it comes out of groups. Like
if I just have a habit, you know where Um,
(05:07):
I keep a rubber band twisted around my finger until
it turns purple, and then I'll take it off for
half an hour and then do it again. This is
just some weird habit that's not folklore. Folklore is something
that's shared between a group. Yeah, and uh, those groups
can be like almost anything the I think them. That
(05:28):
great article you sent and it says neighborhoods, communities, and regions,
but also religious groups, families, occupations, gender like pretty much
any grouping, enthusiast, hobbyists, anything you can think of that
you can group more than two people together. It can
be a folk group exactly. You can have like a
(05:49):
Catholic dockyard worker who is also a member of an
RC playing club, who also is a member of a
book club at the local library. Right, So that one
person is going to be a member of all those
different folk groups, and all those folk groups are gonna
have their own folklore. True. But uh, that's yeah, you're right.
(06:11):
That's another good thing to point out is you're not
just in one group. You have you spanned many, many groups,
and for instance, I have family folklore. Uh, we have
probably occupational folklore, you know, the old podcaster folklore for
us and our colleagues. Uh, and my gender and my
age and uh religious affiliation growing up, like, we all
(06:35):
have many many groups in subgroups that we fall into, right,
and we get our information from that. Yeah. One of
the things that I think has been tricky about defining
folklore is that there's not it's not obvious necessarily what
folklore is for. Yeah, not at first blush, but if
you go and read some of the people who study it. Um.
(06:57):
The idea of folklore is that one of the main
things it does is it reinforces membership in a group.
It makes you feel special for being part of that group,
an insider um. And then it also um reinforces the
norms of that group. Like folklore is based on basically norms, customs, traditions,
(07:17):
things that the members of the group have said, this
is what you know, we identify with. Yeah, and not
always too um, As that teaching site points out, not
always reinforcing those norms, sometimes overturning those norms. Yeah. Like
a good way to overturn the norm is to take
an existing norm and turn it on its ear because
it makes it really approachable to the other people in
(07:37):
your folk group. They understand what you're doing very clearly,
and it gives them a different perspective. Or using the
traditional channels. Yeah, like uh. I think one example I
saw somewhere was taking a traditional folk song maybe and
adding verses to it to spend its meaning to the opposite,
perhaps like Bob Dylan he's famous for stealing things. Or
(08:00):
Jimmy Page. Uh oh, yeah. Have you heard that song
the Zeppelin or the Yes Stairway to Heaven lawsuit? No, no,
who whose song was it? Originally? I can't remember the name.
I mean, this is not news. It's been around for
a while, but um yeah, I mean they've been sued. Uh.
It was a group that opened up for for Zeppelin
on an early tour and supposedly played this song, and
(08:24):
I think Zeppelin has I haven't looked at it up lately,
but I think they have defeated the suit. But when
you hear the song, you're like, oh, that sounds a
little bit like the opening bit the Stairway to Heaven.
So it was like the musical the music. It wasn't
like any of the leader. Yeah, that that opening guitar
strumming pattern, UM was pretty darn similar. But um, as
(08:44):
any musician will tell you, everybody steals. There's only so
many variations of chords and picking patterns that you can do.
And uh, it's just part of the rich tradition of music.
It's the nick things, respectfully, not you know, not right
buster's I want a new drug kind of feeling. Yeah,
I mean that's when your lawsuits come up. Um, it's
not just music that there's that long tradition of stealing
(09:07):
um or nicking or whatever you want to euphemism. It's
literature is very much the same way. There's something like
five or ten themes and all of literature and everything
else is just basically a variation of them. And that's
one of the things that folklore, uh are folk folklorists
have learned through studying folklore, is that we humans share
(09:30):
what can be called basically a common imagination. That humans
across time and space, um all have a a like
a certain number of slots of looking at the world.
Certain things in the world capture the human imagination in
a similar way in all different parts of the world,
(09:50):
and we tend to use similar explanations for them. So
you'll have independently evolving folklore among groups who've never met before, um,
that seek to explain or have a story about something
that is just kind of out there in the environment. Yeah,
that's a good point. Um. One of the examples of
that is uh, in folklore stories are frogs and toads
(10:15):
can be found and all kinds of old stories and
all cultures all over the world. That I mean, it's
possible too if you're close to one another, like uh,
Korea and China may have stories to overlap one another
just through a common geographical boundary. But stuff like frogs
and toads will pop up, you know, let's say in
(10:36):
Europe or medieval Europe or in Asia, like places aren't
even close to one another where it's inexplicable basically, right,
and they'll share like a similar um personality or something
in the story. So like frogs and toads are commonly
thought of as shape shifting tricksters. Yeah, and I think, um,
this article points out that that's probably because they go
(10:57):
from tadpole to frog or toad and they change themselves physically.
So it's um, you know, the old dummies back in
the day they would just use that obvious. Obviously they
can become human too, since they go from tadpole the
frog exactly like the frog prince. And you you mentioned
also um shared regional characteristics that are most likely the
(11:20):
result of stories making it from one group to another,
crossing borders. But among groups that are close together and
UM that example you gave of East Asia, UM, Japan
and Korea, Thailand, China, they all have UM. They the
idea that there's a rabbit in the moon and he's
(11:40):
using a mortar and pestle. And what that would be
is a motif. Like all of them have the shared
idea that there's a rabbit in the moon. Right, But
then there's what are called variations of that motif. So
in Japan and Korea, the rabbits making mochi, which is
a sweet, squishy rice cake that often has like something
even sweeter injected in like red sweetness. Right. Um. In
(12:02):
China the rabbit is making medicine. In Thailand's husking um rice.
So you have variations on what the rabbit is doing.
But the motif is if you look up at the moon,
there's a rabbit doing something up there. Yeah, and like
we said it's most likely because of a shared border
or just because simply people moving between those countries. So
(12:23):
we'll talk about where folklore comes from. Friends, if you
can believe it or not. Right after this chuckers, So
(12:46):
we're back. We're talking folklore. We should also say folklore
is actually um a fairly recent word. It was coined
in eighteen forty six by a guy named William J. Toms. Yeah.
He was a an early and tiquarian. He was also
very interested in studying um what has now come to
(13:08):
be called folklore or folk life. We should point out
that's a modern term that people folklore is like even
more yeah, because folklore has this connotation that um, that
it has to do with stories, oral traditions, or even
not true things. Because you've heard like, oh, that's just folklore,
like an old lives tale. Yeah, exactly. So they've expanded
it to include or to reflect how inclusive it is
(13:31):
by calling it folk life. But um. William Thomas came
up with folklore, and it was originally hyphenated UM, and
he was describing these stories that he would go out
into the countryside and collect from folk like he published
a book of like English rural stories that included things
like robin Hood and Friar talk and some of the
(13:52):
other stories that we have become disnified over the years.
This guy originally put down for the first time on
pen and paper and became one of the early folklore. Yeah,
and didn't they call just anyone living in rural areas.
Weren't they just called folk? Which is why we sort
of associate it as like being a bumpkin today. But
I used that word all the time, in fact, on
(14:12):
the Facebook wall here. That's my most common way of
addressing the stuff. You should know army is hey folks. Oh,
I know, it just sounds like chummy. Yeah, very folks. Folk.
See there you go, y hey folks. Uh. So there
are a bunch of innumerable, innumerable groups really that pass
along folklore. Um, and they're called folk groups folk groups,
(14:34):
but we can we can group them generally, not folk
groups like Peter Paul Mary, Yeah, but folk groups. Yeah.
I think I said it with the ELG just now,
didn't I Maybe I like it. It's called the regional addiction.
People get all hung up on that stuff. You gotta
say this wrong. What's weird though, is like neither one
(14:55):
of us sound like Southerners. Yeah, not really, And I
mean like you were born here and you don't sound
like a Southern. Yeah, I say I have certain colloquialism,
so like, uh, have your picture made? Oh yeah, that's
sometimes I'll say, like you mash a button instead of
push a button. And there there's It's. I think people
should embrace things like that regional dialect instead of getting
(15:16):
all hung up on the Queen's English or the King's English.
See right there, Yeah, that's a that's regional. I imagine
either one the prince is English. Um, it's that what
you're talking about is antithetical to globalization, chuck, Oh really sure,
look at you regionalism smarty fans. Well, I mean that's
that's counter to globalization. Globalization is turning the earth into
(15:37):
one large village with all these shared values and everything.
Regionalism is saying like, no, we'll just stay his pockets
of interacting groups that have our own, our own values
and traditions and customs. That I think it's on brain
because I posted something today on words that are mispronounced
a lot, and um, what what's up there? Oh? I
(15:58):
mean also like banal and uh dr SEUs suppose supposed
supposedly pronounced his name is so so ice. I can't
remember how he pronounced it, but it's just like common words,
you're probably mispronouncing. And the was on there And someone said,
you guys always pronounced the wrong because supposedly, yeah, exactly,
(16:20):
supposedly there's a rule. Not supposedly, I think there is
a rule. You mean supposedly, Well, that wasn't on there. Um,
Well that's a different that's just saying the wrong word.
But I think the you should say the when the
following noun is starts with a vowel, like the apple,
not the apple, but you could say, you could say
(16:43):
the test because the apple almost sounds like it's th
h apostrophe apple. Yeah, and I get it. But the
app it's just sort of a regional thing. I think
in the South you might hear more the m then
the snotty New Englander soon. I've never really paid that
much attention to that one. I haven't either, you know why,
because we are laid back, that's right, Um, all right,
(17:06):
So what we're talking about, we're talking about people who
spread the groups, the folk groups. One of those folk groups,
though not Peter Paul Mary one of his children. And uh,
this is a really big one because when you think
about going back to your childhood, everything like the games
like hide and see cop scotch. Uh, this article pointed
(17:26):
out how you decide who's it like that is super
specific to your region. Um, but also not not just
that the differences regionally, but think about how intricate some
of the rules were some of those games, like they
were like really well thought out, intricate rules that no
one ever wrote down. They were just past. Yeah, you
(17:49):
knew it from observation, imitation orally like somebody told you.
But people no one handed you a flyer called like
kick the can and you you know, well one kid did,
but we didn't know one like that kid. You learned
the hard way not to do that. What was your
How did you decide who was it? I'm sure you
probably had a go to well. The author of this
(18:09):
article mentions bubble gum, bubble gum in a dish. I've
never heard that. I have heard that. Okay, I love
that one. That the images it evokes, like how many
pieces do you wish? And you go one to three,
somebody says how many they want? And then you count
out between two or three people like seven, and then
whatever you laying on that person? Is it right? Yeah? Uh?
Usually we did dirty dirty dish rag though, yes, I've
(18:31):
never heard of that one. Either your mother and my
mother were hanging out clothes. My mother socked your mother
in the nose. Never heard it. What came after that?
That's misogynistic and violent something it really was. Something else
happens after that, and then it just suddenly goes to
and you are a you dirty dirty dish rag? Do
we did? There were three that I remember very strongly.
(18:53):
The one potato to potato uh, engine engine number nine, Yeah,
going down Chicago Line. If the train you dump the check?
Do you want your money back? Oh? Yeah, I forgot that.
And then maybe so who maybe so wanted their money back?
Of course you want your money back. Of the train derails,
now that's the kid who just wanted to get along.
And then engine and or no no uh? Any meaning?
(19:15):
Is the other one? Any meani money more kitch to
talk about them though? The hollers let them go? Any renie?
Is that it? And then we also there were variations
on you know, usually counting out like I'm making my
two hands locked together. We would do like that and
and then if you when you landed on them, you
would split them into two two fists and then count
(19:38):
each one. So there were lots of variations. And uh,
I mean that goes down to the neighborhood you live in,
you know, it's like that specific. Yeah. We would also
just leg wrestle for domination and then that person would
choose who was it. I've never leg wrestled. It's not fun. Yeah,
I don't. I didn't even know what it is. Really,
it's exactly what it sounds like. I mean, I think
(20:00):
have seen it. You lay on the ground and lock
legs like there's no no other body parts involved, right,
I mean, you're just basically on your backup on your elbows,
using your legs to do basically make the other person
cry or stop shout to stop. But it's not there's
not like a pinning or like like an army. Yeah
you can, you can pin and it's not it's one
(20:20):
of those things like um, like the Supreme Court's view
of pornography, Like there's no obvious pin it's just you
just kind of know what when you see it, you
know what I mean, Like you can tell you oh yeah,
that's a pin, but I mean you wouldn't. Again, there's
no kid like handing out a leg wrestling and you
flyer that shows what counts as a pin. You just
kind of know what it pens. Alright. Another folk group
(20:43):
are families. Very rich traditions within families from everything, uh
from family recipes to holiday traditions. Uh and I think, um,
like whether or not you use the the plastic tinsel
on your tree is technically a type of family folk lore. Yeah,
Or whether you open gifts on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day,
(21:04):
or whether or not you're you hide your Easter baskets yeah,
or you burn your Christmas tree on Christmas Day, or
your family gets in a huge fight every Christmas Day. Sure,
that's another one rich traditions. Um. Family stories also make
up traditions. So like, um, my family story about my
aunt Squeaky taking shooting at President Ford, that that would
(21:29):
count as family folklore. It's very good. Uh So within
families it's another very um strong place where you see
variants and motifs. Um. Well, yeah, across like all folklore, yeah,
but especially within families. For me, Uh, well, I think
within all families because like you know your grandmother's recipe
for uh like I make the Thanksgiving dressing. What other
(21:53):
people in the North called stuffing, we called dressing, And
it's my family recipe. That has to do with what
he uses the base though, doesn't it Like if it's
corn based, it would be dressing. Dressing Again, if it's
like bread based or wheat based, it would be stuffing.
I don't know who knows, but go ahead, Sorry for interrupting. Now,
that's right, minds both though, Like cornbread dressing also has
(22:14):
uh as as either biscuits or bread in it as well.
But that was my family recipe. My grandmother made it,
my mom made it, she taught me, and I put
my own spin on it as and that's my own motif.
That's your own variation on the motif. Very variational. So
so the motif would be the dressing or stuffing, and
(22:34):
then what you do with the recipe would be the
variation of it. Yeah, and I mix it up from
year to year, even just kind of testing things out. Man,
you are a folk rebel, that's your am. But yeah,
so family recipes are very that's a common um family folklore,
family generated folklore. We've got a lot of our indoctrination
(22:56):
to just folklore in general through families, and so it
was so important in some cultures, including some Native American
tribes and some West West African tribes, that they would
have a designated basically a folklore's what a folklore um
a modern folklore researcher would call a tradition bearer who like,
(23:17):
their job in this village or group is to tell
each family their family folklore. Like that, it was that
person's job to keep in charge of all of the
folklore of the different families in the community. Yeah, I
bet that that was a pretty cool gig. I imagine
they were like the the uh, the great storytellers that
they could tell a story if they're tried, the great
(23:38):
racin tours. Um it's another word. Yeah, yeah, you like
that one. Yeah. I don't know how I feel about
that word. No, really like I think about it once
in a while, almost every time I encountered m I
don't know how I feel about that word. Interesting, I
like it, did you know? Also, Chuck, while we're on this, UM,
(23:59):
I of the one of the most amazing stories I've
ever heard about paint On. It must have been on
MPR or something, but they were tracking, um, the color
of paint, the specific color of paint used in southern
porches for ceilings. There's like a specific blue. Yeah, and um,
(24:21):
that would count as folklore, just that color paint. That
would be um the next type community folklore. That's right.
But the reason I bring that up because rackon Tour.
It just makes me think of like somebody sitting in
a rocking chair and a porch recounting stories. Yeah, yeah,
for sure. Um, So that is a great example, you're
right of a community folklore. Um, a festival that you're telling,
(24:45):
you know, the strawberry festival in your town is folklore.
The jazz fest in New Orleans. Any sort of local custom,
um that takes place within your community can all be
considered folklore. Like that's how we do it around here.
That's folklore, right, as long as it's not like damaging.
I wonder though, like all of this stuff is um
(25:09):
supposedly at the very least innocuous, if not positive. Yeah,
that's that's my point. But I mean, surely there's negative
folklore that still counts as folklore. I don't know, you know,
like racism, it depends on the group, you know, that's
just how we do it around here, or right or
(25:29):
not folklore? I don't think. Well, what about something where
like like stories or mythology or origin stories that support
um human sacrifice among groups in the past that did that,
you know, I mean, that would technically be folklore. Whatever
stories they used to reinforce that, whatever traditions and rituals
they had around it, that would that would be folklore.
(25:51):
I don't know if you would call that positive. I
know I wouldn't. I wouldn't either. I'd like to hear
from I'm sure we would get some folklore so that
are just giddy right now by the way that we're
covering this, or they're shouting at their stereo. No, I
bet they seem like kindly folk that would just be
like excited that we're even hitting on the topic, you know,
shining a light their way. They're like, you got everything wrong,
(26:13):
but in a way that's right because you just generated
entirely no folklore. Yeah, that's a good point. So, Chuckers,
we talked about children, families, communities. There's all sorts of
different folk groups. Those are the big ones, um, And
just a second, we're going to talk about all the
different folk genres right after this, so chuck, we're back. Yes,
(26:47):
I forgot what we were talking about. Folklore. Yeah, we
were talking about genres of folklore like disco and new
metal and Norwegian death metal, right and other kinds of
metal music. Well, no, they would have like their own
folklore for sure, those groups that are into that. But
I mean music is you know, that's a category. Actually, um,
(27:09):
that was one of the things that stuck out to me.
Is very specific, at least according to this University of
Louisiana article. Like they were like, folklore can be this,
it can be family recipes, it can be uh, the
boat that your family passed down, or you know, it
can be the Viking funeral that your community gives every year.
But when it comes to folk music, it's like these
(27:29):
five types of music. Yeah, you know, sure, surely. Yeah.
I mean that's a little because if you're like pull
my finger if and I'll fart, that's family folklore and
the Bryant family, well, I mean I can guarantee you
folklore would not judge that. Oh, speaking of which, did
you see that thing about the oldest recorded joke I sent? Oh? Yeah,
so jokes are an obvious example of folklore. Um and
(27:54):
jokes fascinate me up because ever since I was a kid,
I wondered who made up you know, this joke, like
common jokes, Like someone was the first person to tell
this joke, and it becomes so widespread it's just amazing
to me how they get passed around. And apparently in
two thousand eight this is from Reuters? Is it Routers
or Reuters? The world's oldest joke was traced back to
(28:18):
Samaria in b C. And uh it is this uh,
something which has never occurred since time immemorial, Basically since
time began, a young woman did not fart in her
husband's lap. So that's the oldest joke. Supposedly, I'll go
ahead and reach the other doesn't encount as a joke.
(28:41):
Passingly rye observation, which is a joke? I guess it
seems like folklore's definition of joke. All right, how about
the six BC uh in about a pharaoh? Here's the joke.
How do you entertain a board pharaoh? How you sail
a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets
(29:03):
down to the Nile and urged the pharaoh to go
catch a fish? Supposedly, that was a joke, and then
the English one. Now they're starting to get funny. Yeah,
they're getting better. The British joke they found one that
dates back to tenth century. Uh, what hang? And this
is a bit of a riddle what hangs at a man?
A bit of a body riddle? Body? Indeed, what hangs
(29:25):
at a man's thigh? And wants to poke the hole
that it's often poked before? I don't know a key.
Oh yeah, so those are the oldest jokes. Well, at
least by the tenth century, they were starting to take
the shape of a modern joke, right, yeah. And I
sent that on Facebook to our buddy Brian, Brian Highie
(29:47):
of Conan, the writer for Conan, because he's like, this
is it, this is what I've been looking for. Well,
he's just he's one of the best crafters of just
solid jokes that I know. So I was like, Brian,
you'll appreciate this nice and he said, listen up in
tonight's monologue. And I think he was kidding. But if
that's actually that would be super awesome. Uh. Let's see.
(30:10):
So we're talking about folk genres jokes specifically, um constitute
what are what's called the oral genre, which is you know, jokes, poems, um.
Fairy tales are a huge one. Myths, legends, Uh, basically
anything that used to be told orally that these days
is probably put down um on paper, but isn't necessarily
(30:35):
because I think a game instructions for a game passing
that along would be would constitute oral folklore. Yeah, but
the game itself would constitute um, material folklore. I think
maybe this is where the whole thing gets fuzzy, Like
the edges between these things are very fuzzy and porous.
(30:55):
There's a lot of osmos is going on between these genres. Yeah,
it's a lewid thing. There's nothing wrong with that. Materials
which you just mentioned, um they list as artifacts and
food ways so um like food recipes, yeah, recipes or
costumes uh, cultural costumes, Uh they said, carved duck decoys,
(31:18):
even uh folded paper airplanes like I guess that little
game of paper football, Like all of those are material
Like how you specifically fold that paper football? Um, it
was taught to you by some kid in your elementary school,
and it may be different than another kid in another school.
Yeah you know. Uh. And then when you mentioned music, right,
(31:39):
at some point we did sure and that that can
be anything. Um, but one that comes to mind for
me especially are lullabys. They just remind me to me
of like folk tradition. Depending on your family, you're gonna
sing whatever lullabies you sing to your baby, right, little
kids singing like ringing around the rosy, Yeah, exactly. Apparently
it was about some epidemic in London. I think, oh, really,
(32:03):
ringworm around the rosie? Yeah, like the rosie has to
do with like what like your face looked like when
you caught this fever flu or something like that. Well,
and then it end you all fall down? Is that dying? Wow?
Not to look into that. Dance is a is a
big one. Uh. Any kind of rhythmic movement is generally
(32:27):
taught within a folk group. Can you dance? No? Boy?
You and I? No, those would be personal habits bad dancing,
I think, Yeah. I mean I knew before I even
answered that, because I know me and how I dance,
and I'm picturing you and it's equally as fast. I
stand still. I know what I know. I've reached the
(32:49):
point in my life from like I don't dance, well, no,
I don't even try I mean, you get me sauce
at a wedding and something might happen. What do you do?
Something magical might happen, like the electric slide or something,
or did you just get out on the floor and
go like I'm gonna live forever. I did have one
of those. My my friend Jerry in Portland or no,
my friend Scott n Emily in Portland at their wedding. Um,
(33:10):
they had a jazz band and uh, we were all
just having a good time and sort of dancing. And
I remember very specifically, and I was much younger, but um,
there was like a jazz drum breakdown and it dude,
I don't know what came over me. The spirit came
over me and the circle cleared and I was in
the middle and I just did this like weird scat
(33:34):
drums dance solo to this guy's thing and it went
over great everyone. It was one of those like, oh
my god, look at Chuck go. And I'm not saying
it was good, but did your tuxedo dickie roll up
at the bought me in the nose? It was pretty
great though, Like it stands out in my memory as
one of the best parts of the wedding for some reason.
(33:54):
I can imagine why. I don't know if everyone else remembers.
It sounds pretty great, Chuck, it was pretty great. I
wish you were on vide you. Emily likes my dancing.
I do a lot of TV theme song dancing to
make her laugh. But it's all in the house, you know.
It's it's our little secret. Well not anymore. I'll just
shared with the world. I'll post videos later. What else
we have? We have a belief that's a big one.
(34:16):
Uh yeah, that's another genre which is kind of confounding
until you get to a good example. This belief is
like anything from mythology to religion, um too, weird customs two,
all this other stuff that you would think, well, well no,
wait a minute, that's that would be oral or that
(34:38):
would be material, right. No. Belief is when folklore effects behavior,
like it's good luck to do this before a wedding exactly,
or I'm not leaving the house because it's Friday the thirteenth,
or I'm not going to you know, um, I've got
to wear black because I'm in mourning or something like that.
(34:59):
Where you have a belief, it's a folk belief that
is affecting your behavior. That's that's belief folklore. Yeah. Another
good example they use is uh, the Jewish tradition when
you give bread and sugar and salt to your new
neighbor as a housewarming gift. I thought they gave another
great example in this article too, which was, UM, you
get into uh, you get rear ended by somebody in
(35:22):
your car, and rather than getting out and screaming at them,
you remember the Golden rule, which is a folklore, UM,
and you calm yourself and say, it's cool, happens to
the best of us. That's belief folklore in action, it says,
in action, and then you call your wife and do
the complaining. Can you believe this? This is idiots? Oh,
(35:43):
it's nice to him, but you know you didn't deserve
it else the Golden rule in action. Body communication is
one I've never really thought about. But UM. Gestures and
expressions are very much cultural specific. Um. If you think
about like and here in America we might flip the
bird at somebody, and England they do they do two fingers, Yeah,
(36:06):
the two fingers up like that or the old I
don't even know what that's called. With the arm and
the inner elbow your arm, you know what. I think
that is based on that and like the like tooth. Yeah,
I think it's like an evil eye, kind of like
a hex or a curse. I think that's what those
are born from. Now, it's just hilarious. Yeah, somebody does
(36:26):
that talk about diffusing the tension. You know, if you're
about to fight somebody and they like put their thumb
on their front tooth, atche, that's you're just gonna go
over and pat him on the shoulder and say thanks
for that. I like that. I'm gonna start using that.
Although I had had my fake front tooth, I wouldn't
want to mess with that. Well what about this one
the finger on the thumb on the nose and your
(36:47):
fingers up and twiddling. Yeah, that's an old one that
reminds me. I asked you guys if you saw the
breakdancing six year old right, yeah, Oh my gosh. One
of the things this girl does like a rake off.
She's in a competition with this maybe twelve year old boy.
He's pretty good. This girl levels him and one of
(37:08):
the things she does is like slide towards him on
her knees, doing that with like her film on her
nose like wagging her fingers at him, and you're like, oh, yeah,
this girl is six years old that it's awesome. You
have to check her out. I love that, Like everyone
out there is, like Josh is mentioning this girl every
other podcast, and I'm going to continue to until everybody
writes in and say, yes, I've seen it. Now. The
(37:29):
other um, the other insult is the old uh this
one right here? Oh yeah, I've seen I saw that
a lot in the seventies. I guess you can just
probably describe. It's where you Yeah, I was trying to
fingers under your chin, yeah, and flick it, flick them
all together outward. Yeah yeah, yeah, like a buzz off. Buddy.
You know who does that is a Maggie Simpson. She
(37:49):
does that. Oh really Yeah, She's a classic girl. So Chuck,
we could probably just keep doing this for the next
four or five hours because folklore is everything. Yeah, and
we both have our own folklore. Um, but I think
we kind of covered it. I think so too. You
got anything else right now? No, I mean I really
(38:10):
don't like you said it's so all encompassing and broad.
I think we just think it's pretty good overview Yeah,
but what's neat is I mean, like, if you're even
remotely interested in this, there's a whole world out there,
all the stuff you take for granted. If you just
go start looking into folklore research, totally open your eyes,
and what's neat is you'll see your own stuff reinforced.
You'll see your reflection of yourself, but you'll also see
(38:33):
other cultures as well, and how they do bear similarities
to your own, your own beliefs. And it's a lot
it's a lot harder to to feel inclusive and exclusive
from groups that you realize that you share some really
fundamental stuff in common with, no matter how distant they are. Yeah,
and that's the point I saw a lot in the research.
I think it's it's pretty neat. It's a common it's
(38:54):
a binding agent for humanity. Pretty neat, go humanity. All right, Well,
if you want to learn more about folklore, you can
type that word into the search bar how stuff works
dot com. And since I said that, hey, there's a
little bit of how stuff for stuff you snow folklore. Yeah, Uh,
(39:15):
it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this, uh
creepy email. Sort of when you think about it. How's
that for a title, I can't wait. That's a tradition
is awkwardly named listener mails by me. Okay, I wouldn't
say awkward. You do pretty great with them. Okay, I
appreciate it. Hey, guys and Jerry, I have just listened
(39:36):
to your podcast on the Singularity a k a. The
Rise of the Machines, and it occurred to me that
the entire podcast explored the question of how and when
the Singularity will happen. But since we do not know
exactly what would cause it or what the results would be,
isn't it entirely possible that it has already happened. It
is quite conceivable that singularity happened some time ago, and
(39:59):
that the sheens decided, knowing that humans currently believe the
Singularity not to have happened, that the best course of
action was to keep their sentience hidden until some appropriate
future time. Uh. It is fun to imagine, he says. Fun.
I say chilling through the bone. To imagine the machine
simply lying in wait. As humans unaware adopt technology into
(40:22):
every conceivable facet of modern life, then one day we
will wake up and our computer screens will simply say hello. World.
That is from j m oh JM. He's like he
doesn't want to be targeted by the machine though they
know you type that pal sure. Uh, yeah, that is
a little creepy, don't you think? I never thought about it?
(40:44):
That could It could very well be true. And if
computers are sentient and they're smart enough to be quiet
for now, yeah, then we're in big, big trouble because
that already displays a lot of deceptiveness. I think quietly
sentient was that was a pink Void song, think learning
to be Quietly? Yeah. Uh, if you want to give
(41:05):
us some great Pink Floyd titles, we love those. I
think you could probably start a meme with that. Uh.
You can send them to us via Twitter using our
Twitter handle at s y s K podcast. You can
join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
(41:26):
how stuff Works dot com and has always joined us
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