Toelken, Barre. The Dynamics of Folklore. University Press of Colorado, 2013.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to describe the dynamics of folklore without referring to traditional events or performances, vernacular expressions articulated among members of a high context group. Just as the dynamics discussed in Chapter 2 are only hypothetical if nothing happens, so a traditional performance or event tells us little if it does not occur in a traditional framework. For this reason, John Miles Foley calls performance “the enabling event” in which the referents supplied by tradition are brought to life by the skilled articulations of speakers, singers, builders, weavers, and other vernacular artists. This chapter focuses on performance as a central aspect of dynamics by showing some details of traditional expressive interaction.
The following anecdote of a Navajo storytelling event concentrates on the people and how they did what they did, their ideas concerning what happened, their reasons, how they got into the event, and how the whole interaction was seen by three non-Navajo visitors. A later chapter focuses on the inventory of ingredients for such events, but obviously, in reality, events as dynamic performances and people as dynamic participants cannot be separated.
Background: three folklorists (Barre Toelken, Jan Harold Brunvand, John Wilson Foster) have arrived at a Navajo home after a long drive. Toelken is already known to the family; the other two are interested observers.
Setting: a small frame house in a desert town in southern Utah, just north of the Navajo reservation. The inhabitants of the house are Navajo and have moved off the reservation because of hard times. The children go to public school but their parents try to keep home life traditional. Everyone speaks Navajo at home; the parents speak only a few words of English.
Time: about 9:30 p.m. in late December. There is snow on the ground, and it is very cold. This is the time of year when Coyote stories can (and should) be told. And this is the only season when string figures can be made.
Situation: the father, Yellowman, sits in a chair, dozing; small children are playing on the floor. The mother weaves on a vertical loom at the far side of the room. The folklorists sit quietly, talking occasionally in low tones. In White American terms, nothing is happening, although in Navajo custom this is a common way of enjoying someone’s company. One hour passes in this manner. The teen-age children of the family come in suddenly, accompanied by a Mormon missionary, who wakes up the father to remind him that the children should be in church this coming Sunday. He notices the White visitors: “You fellows with the Bureau of Indian Affairs?” “No, just friends, visiting.” There is a puzzled look from the missionary; he departs. The teenagers say hello and sit down quietly; the father returns to a half-doze. After about fifteen minutes he says sleepily, in Navajo, “Perhaps these visitors are Mormons, too?” “No,” I reply, “this one is from back East originally; he likes to study old stories, as I do. This other one is from Ireland.”
This translates in Navajo as “He comes from beyond the ocean,” and Helen Yellowman turns suddenly from her loom, grins, and holding her hands as if using a machine gun, makes a whispered t-t-t-t-t sound. “What does she mean?” asks Foster. “She thinks you’re from Vietnam; that’s also called ‘beyond the ocean.’” Foster replies, “Tell her Vietnam is a vicarage tea party compared to Northern Ireland.” The translation suffers and the macabre humor is missed. There is some puzzlement, but general cheer ensues because the visitors are not Mormons. “Now let’s have some coffee,” Yellowman says.
Everyone converges on the kitchen. While coffee is being prepared, Brunvand asks for a piece of string; he has a game he wants to show the children, and he pretends not to know the Navajos’ great interest in string games. He makes a simple cat’s cradle and shows it to a nearby child of about ten. “Could you do that?” The boy asks him innocently to do it again, slowly. Then, with mock care and deliberation, the boy reproduces the same figure perfectly, holds it up briefly, and then starts quickly on a more complicated one. He asks Brunvand with a grin, “Can you do that one?” Brunvand acts stumped. The boy produces another and another. The string passes to others in the family, and in rapid succession we see a Navajo rug, a bolt of lightning, two coyotes racing away from each other, a bat, and a worm that crawls over and under two parallel strings.
“Where did you learn those designs?” we ask. The children confer with their father for a while, then one answers, “I don’t know. I guess it’s all from Spider Woman. They say if you fall into Spider Woman’s den she won’t let you out unless you can do all these. And then if you do these in the summer you won’t get out at all anyway.”
“Why is that?”
“Well, we’re only supposed to do it in the winter when the spiders are hibernating, because it’s really their kind of custom to do things with string.” During this conversation, the mother has gone back to weaving momentarily, and the other children are still doing string figures.
“Spider Woman taught us all these designs as a way of helping us think. You learn to think when you make these. And she taught us about weaving, too,” a teen-age daughter puts in.
“If you can think well,” the first boy adds, “you won’t get into trouble or get lost. Anyway, that’s what our father says.”
Toelken: “But Spider Woman didn’t teach you these things, right? Where did you learn them?”
“Well, we probably picked them up from each other and from our father, but they were already around, you know. All the people know about them. Spider Woman taught us.”
Yellowman speaks now for the first time and, taking the string, makes a tight design. “Do you know what that is?” he asks us. We do not. He shows his children and they all respond: “Sq’ Tso” (literally, “Big Star,” Venus). He nods with satisfaction and makes another figure; he holds it up to us, and we shake our heads. He holds it up to the children, and they respond, “Dilyehe.” Since I have never heard the term I ask one of the children to translate it; everyone looks blank. “That’s the only word there is for it.” Suddenly, in an attempt to explain, Yellowman motions us all outside. There, shivering in the night wind, we watch him carefully hold the string figure above his head and point beyond it with pursed lips to the Pleiades.
Back inside, he helps cover our embarrassment at not knowing our astronomy by making string figure caricatures of those present: a face with vague glasses to represent Brunvand, another with a loop hanging down for Foster’s beard, another with a piece of string trailing down to suggest the power cord on Toelken’s tape recorder.
Finally, the father puts the string down and says seriously, “It’s too easy to become sick, because there are always things happening to confuse our minds. We need to have ways of thinking, of keeping things stable, healthy, beautiful (hozho). We try for a long life, but lots of things can happen to us. So we keep our thinking in order by these figures and we keep our lives in order with the stories. We have to relate our lives to the stars and the sun, the animals, and to all of nature or else we will go crazy, or get sick.”
Now there is a silence of about ten minutes, but no one moves away from the table. There is an air of expectancy. The mother comes in and pours more coffee for everyone. We start the tape recorder. The father clears his throat and begins speaking slowly. The following transcript presents his delivery, one phrase at a time, and his audience’s response.
Published: Apr 7, 2026 @ 14:06.
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