- ~ Volume 9, Number 2 June 1990 CONTENTS KEITH CUNNINGHAM "I Have no Idea Whether That's True or Not": Belief and Narrative Event Enactment 3-14 JAMES G. DELANEY Collecting Folklore in Ireland 15-37 SYLVIA FOX Witch or Wise Women?-women as healers through the ages 39-53 ROBERT PENHALLURICK The Politics of Dialectology 55-68 J.M. KIRK Scots and English in the Speech and Writing of Glasgow 69-83 Reviews 85-124 Index of volumes 8 and 9 125-128 ISSN 0307-7144 LORE AND LANGUAGE The J oumal of The Centre for English Cultural Tradition and Language Editor J.D.A. Widdowson © Sheffield Acdemic Press Ltd, 1990 Copyright is waived where reproduction of material from this Journal is required for classroom use or course work by students. SUBSCRIPTION LORE AND LANGUAGE is published twice annually. Volume 9 (1990) is: Individuals £16.50 or $27.50 Institutions £50.00 or $80.00 Subscriptions and all other business correspondence shuld be sent to Sheffield Academic Press, 343 Fulwood Road, Sheffield S 10 3BP, England. All previous issues are still available. The opinions expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher, and are the responsibility of the individual authors. Printed on acid-free paper in Great Britian by The Charlesworth Group, Huddersfield [Lore & Language 9/2 (1990) 3-14] "I Have No Idea Whether That's True or Not": Belief and Narrative Event Enactment Keith Cunningham A great deal of scholarly attention has in recent years been directed toward a group of traditional narratives told in British and Anglo-American cultures1 which have been called "contemporary legend" ,2 "urban legend" ,3 and "modem myth". 4 This interdisciplinary research involves a series of report­ ings of narrative event enactments including that which is enacted (plot) and how it is performed (enactment) and functions "to entertain and to maintain the ways of the group."5 Contemporary scholarship concerning narrative event performance has, by and large, moved beyond Bascom's description in his classification of folk narrative to the effect that legend is believed by its customary audience and/or performers. 6 English folklorist Gillian Bennett, for example, des­ cribed "the dual nature of legend shifting its position along the axis from fact to fiction. " 7 Bennett also called for "the analysis of actual performances and actual usage"8 as a part of the study of belief Bennett's insights con­ cerning belief. and the methodologies of discourse analysis9 and sociological folkloristics 10 suggest that a continuum is the ideal construct to conceptualise belief on the part of performers toward the plots of the narrative event which they enact. This article demonstrates by analysis of actual narrative event enactments that performers' statements concerning plots they perform range from belief to nonbelief and that, whether or not plots are believed, narrative events are enacted for a number of reasons. Performers' statements of belief in tran­ scriptions of narrative event enactments in the Arizona Friends of Folklore Archive demonstrate a wide range of stated belief. Performers' beliefs toward narrative event enactments can be conveniently described in terms of a continuum as follows: 4 Keith Cunningham emphasis on believed performance non believed rather than belief X---------------------X----------------------X Some narrative events are enacted as though they were true. Toelken' s description of his encounter with a person who believed a narrative event plot is justifiably well known: During our friendly discussion of urban belief tales, a university administrator told one he knew of a similar story which was "actually true." . He told me of a cement truck driver who stopped home ... To his surprise, he found a strange car there, and being a suspicious sort, ... filled the strange car with concrete. I. pointed out the widespread occurrence of that story ... My acquain­ tance ... became very irate, insisting that we step outside to settle the matter. 11 Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand's similar plot of his encounter with a true believer is also well known: This is a true story. When I was flying to New York City recently, I found myself seated next to . a New Yorker.. My seatmate turned to me . .. "Why are you going to New York?" he asked. I explained that I had written a book about modern folklore, and I was going to be interviewed on a television news program . "What' s modern folklore?" he wanted to know, so I put a copy of The Vanishing Hitchhiker in his hands ... He leafed through the pages, .. but he never seemed to find an urban legend that he had heard of. Then ... he spotted this reference ... "A few Pop Rocks . .. were swallowed whole and the internal fizzing killed a child." The boy .. asked, "Do you know how little Mikey died?" "No, how?" I responded... And so I was told ... how ... Mikey, the one who eats the bowlful of an unfamiliar cereal. in the Life Cereal television com­ mercials, had swallowed a handful of Pop Rocks, then taken a drink of soda pop, and his stomach had exploded. "Now that's an urban legend ... ", I declared . .. "You mean that little Mikey didn' t die from eating Pop Rocks?" ... "Of course ... ", I explained . .. "OK, then .. how did he die?"12 Both Toelken' s and Brunvand' s accounts could be matched plot for plot by most narrative scholars who present analysis to the general public through Belief and Narrative Event Enactment 5 teaching or writing. A text in the Arizona Friends of Folklore Archive clearly shows narrative event performed as believed: Informant: Well, actually-! had heard about this sort of thing happening to other people. But-I have a friend who had come to Northern Arizona University, left Northern Arizona University and went to San Diego when the hockey team folded. And-he used to call my roommate and I at like two or three in the morn­ ing-and we'd like talk for hours. And finally one day-we were like-you better get off the phone-your bill is gonna be outrageous. And he told us, "Oh, don't worry about it. It is somebody's else's credit card number." Collector: (laughing) Oh, my gosh! Informant: And we like-no way. But he'd call us several times a week always late at night and always from a pay phone. And it was a pay phone near his work-not by his home so that he would get into trouble. Collector: Right. That's probably smart. Informant: So, then we went to that pay phone, and of course we went to San Diego, and the credit card number was written on the booth. Collector: Oh, my gosh. Do you think other people were using the number also? How did he get the card to begin with? Informant: I don't know. But-somehow these guys would get these credit card numbers and use them. Collector: You mean that this was a group of guys? Informant: Yeah. It wasn't just him. It was him and half that school (USIU). Collector: What does USIU stand for? Informant: U.S. International University. Collector: So it was a whole bunch of people. Informant: Oh yeah! And you know it was out of control. And it was funny because we met this one guy who was from Saudia Arabia or something like that-I forget where he was from. But he said that one time he had a credit card number. He was really rich and just down there to go to school, and he got a phone bill that was $22,000. Collector: Oh, my God! Informant: His parents just paid it because it was no big deal to them. Collector: You mean-$22,000 and his parent just paid it? (Outraged!) Informant: Yeah, and the next month it was even worse. They didn't even stop the calling card or anything like that. Collector: Well, that was really stupid. Informant: Pages and pages of bills. So--finally he and his parents went to the phone company and explained their situation. Collector: Did they get their money back? Informant: Yeah, and my friends never got caught. As a matter of fact-as far as I know, it may still be going on.13 6 Keith Cunningham The assertion, "as far as I know, it may still be going on", is an assertion of belief, and the assertion is in keeping with the rest of the enactment. Neither collector nor performer seemed to have any doubt that the narrative event plot which they enacted was true. Some narrative events are enacted with very little apparent concern about whether or not they are true. A large group of texts in the Arizona Friends of Folklore Archive form a cluster of narratives which by their per­ formances assert a middle ground toward belief: A good friend of mine who was a beautician had heard this story from one of her clients . .. A very prominent business man owned a large automobile dealership and had a roving eye with the women. His wife had lived with this for several years, and she was getting tired of it. One night after he went to bed, she decided she would get even and stop his running around for good. She took a whole tube of super glue and put it on his private area. Needless to say, the man was in a difficult position since super glue hardens immediately. He had to be admitted to a hospital and have surgery. It wasn't long after this happened that super glue remover came out on the market, and we often wondered if the manufacturer of super glue had heard this story and decided they should invent a remover.