Folk Groups

As I was reading the chaper in The Study of American Folklore I was completely surprised by how many different kinds of folk groups there are out here. Personally I could think of several different folk groups that I belong to just from the suggestions made in the text. To start with I work retail, and it is full of different stories about the company I work for, and the people I work with. We have this theory that if two people start to date at the store they have a really good shot at getting married. At least 4 different couples have found each other in my store and gotten married. We actually have two managers engaged to each other right now. Not something you typically hear about in retail, but something that I couldn't imagine our store without. Gossip about who's going to be next is extremely common.

I also belong to a folk group through my family. My family has always been very interested in traditions and the history of where we come from. Growing up I learned so many different stories and songs from my great-grandmother, Nana Wall, as well as making new traditions. We mostly learned about our Irish heritage from my Nana Wall. That is another folk group. Irish-Americans have an extremely strong sense of being Irish, and that is something that I am very proud of. My Nana wall came over from Ireland when she was a young woman, but until the day she died she still talked about the family farm like it was just around the corner.

I am also part of the folk group of New England. I lived in New England until I was 9 years old, and I still consider myself to be more of a northern girl then a southern. Growing up in the Boston area I had a different way of expressing myself then the kids I met in Virginia. It is wicked hard to describe the differences between the two, because it has a lot to do with how people talk and act and express themselves, more then having to do with exactly what they say. It is a facial expression, a hand gesture, or a tone of voice that to me screams New England. But I also did spend a lot of time in Northern Virginia which is completely filled with its own folklore. Even to just say that you are from Northern Virginia is almost always followed by phrase or thought "but we aren't really the south". In Northern Virginia it isn't so much that we are southern, or northern, but more that it is a merging of the two.

I would consider myself part a folk group made up of young women in the 21st century. There are so many different ways that young women are viewed in the 21st century, I'm not exactly sure what would be considered part of the folk group, and what is just stereotyping. If you look at young women like Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, and Brittany Spears, I wouldn't be surprised if people looking at the young women of America didn't think that we are all like that. But then you also go to college and hear so many different stories about what a "college girl" is. The stories about that "college girl" in that particular college who went nuts and started doing crazy drugs is something that is prevalent in many different colleges. The cautionary tales told by upperclassmen about different girls they know who have dropped out because of drugs or unwanted pregnancy are everywhere. There are also college stories that my friends tell me all the time, like the theory that most freshman pair up in the first few months of college. Then they all break up a few months later. I have no idea if it actually happens, but I still see a young couple on campus and wonder if they are just feeling all the freedom college allows for the first time and channeling that into a relationship. I am also part of the folk group of college students.