A personal-experience narrative about an encounter with the supranormal. In an effort to
establish discrete categories for oral prose narratives, Swedish folklorist Carl W.von
Sydow suggested the term “memorate” to refer to single-episodic narratives about a
supranormal event, told by the actual person who experienced the event (von Sydow
[1934] 1948).
Memorates are not fictive accounts but are allegedly true reports of an actual
experience that the narrator had. Von Sydow recognized that folk belief may lie at the
core of both memorates and legends, but in terms of tradition the two narrative forms
were not related. He sought in his taxonomy to distinguish these apparently
nontraditional and oftentimes spontaneous narratives firom what folklorists at the time
considered to be true legends. He insisted that a memorate was not a form of legend
because it lacked two essential qualities: It was neither traditional (that is, it did not
circulate by word of mouth because by definition it could be told only by the person who
had the experience), nor did it possess poetic characteristics (that is, it lacked the stylistic
qualities and alterations that appear in traditional legends). If a memorate sparks enough
interest among the folk and is repeated by different people, this nontraditional narrative
form may become, in von Sydow’s taxonomy, a memorial legend. On the whole,
however, memorates, he argued, offer passing interest to the folklorist simply because
they provide voice to experiences that the folk find engaging.
Since von Sydow’s seminal work, folklorists have made considerable effort to
exploring the subtleties of this narrative form and to expand upon von Sydow’s original
ideas. Many folklorists now view memorates as spontaneous narratives growing out of a
noteworthy experience happening in an otherwise routine, day-to-day existence.
Folklorists distinguish several types of memorates: those that are based on recognized
legend motifs or known legends; those that reveal a folk belief or folk custom or folk
attitude; and those that lack legend motifs and belief elements but contain other motifs
found in other traditional narrative forms such as the tall tale or the historical legend.
Moreover, the term “memorate” may also refer to second- and third-hand accounts of the
original narrative if the narration suggests fidelity to the primary account.
Memorates, like supernatural or belief legends, recount encounters with supernatural
signs, ghosts, and other mystical beings. The motif of a ghost that returns to haunt the
place of an accident or the site of a great tragedy appears frequently in American
memorates and legends. Revenants returning from the dead to right wrongs or to provide
warnings of impending danger to the living are also very popular core motifs. When
narrators tell these stories, they reflect current legend traditions, or at the least, they may
be lingering, interesting stories about past beliefs.
Memorates that present encounters with psychic experiences are easily collected. Even
in America’s technocratic society, dreams portend warnings and charms bring good luck.
Experiences with both provide the bases for many memorates. People offer detailed,
realistic accounts about a miraculous cure they brought about by performing appropriate religious rituals, such as praying novenas, lighting votive candles, or publishing special
prayers in the local newspaper. These stories not only validate existing beliefs, but also
promote the rituals. Perhaps some folk superstitions and beliefs persist because their
effectiveness is confirmed by memorates.
The third kind of memorate centers on such themes as extraordinary skill and
strengths. A narrator presents a realistic depiction of an extraordinary experience in
which the narrator either saw or demonstrated tremendous personal stamina or
outstanding physical strength and cunning. These memorates avoid the outrageous, comic
exaggeration found in traditional boasts, but they may be influenced by content and
narrative structure of the tall tale and boast. Richard M. Dorson, in his Bloodstoppers and
Bearwalkers, refers to the men who narrate this kind of story as sagamen (Dorson
1952:249–272).
Memorates did not receive much attention from American folklorists until the
publication of an English translation of von Sydow’s work. But as simple as the
memorate might first appear, it has elicited extensive debate, and von Sydow’s original
notions about it have been challenged on a number of fronts. For example, von Sydow
considered both form and content when he defined the memorate—its form is that of a
first-person narrative and its content deals with a specific supranormal event allegedly
experienced by the narrator.
Folklorists now question the stipulation that the memorate must be told by the person
who actually experienced the happening. Some identify as memorates supranormal
experience stories that are told second- and thirdhand if the narrators acknowledge that
they personally know the person who experienced the event and credit that person with
the experience. Thus, some scholars consider memorates stories of supranormal
encounters that have an opening formula such as “My uncle, who never lies, told me this
happened to him” or “A friend of my aunt told me this happened to her.” This suggests
that the ‘I’-narrator may actually refer to the narrator or may merely function as a
rhetorical technique intended to give immediacy, vigor, and a unique validity to the
narrative and its contents. Finally, some critics suggest that earlier collectors in their
diligence to publish legend texts did not hesitate to transform memorates into thirdperson legend form.
The supranormal content of personal narratives naturally suggests a relationship
among memorates, legend, and folk belief. Folklorists have become interested in
understanding the progression from folk belief to protomemorate, to memorate, to belief
legend. One theory suggests that the memorate is a personal narrative about a preexisting
folk belief maintained within the folk group, and, through repeated tellings, it provides
the foundation for a fabulate or a legend text. In other situations, the memorate, with its
emphatic reference to a personal experience, functions as an authoritative and convincing
narrative expression of a folk belief, having a revitalizing effect on a belief that has begun
to lose its currency because of doubts.
For the most part, folklorists have generally rejected von Sydow’s suggestion that the
memorate is a relatively insignificant narrative form. Moreover, folklorists are moving
away from the impulse to place narrative forms, especially legends, into rigidly
segregated categories and are beginning to appreciate the fluidity of oral forms and how
readily the same narrative can flow from one telling and genre into a different genre at
another telling. In the hands of skilled and unskilled narrators alike, the memorate may easily become a fabulate, and a legend may become a memorate. The socio-narrative
conduits and contexts through which belief accounts pass permit variations that
encourage poetic creativity and narrative license. With increasing interest in modern
legend narratives and the personal-experience narrative in particular, folklorists continue
to explore the nature of the memorate and refine their understanding of its relationship to
other narrative genres and its place in the study of folk narrative.
Richard Sweterlitsch
References
Dégh, Linda, and Andrew Vazsonyi. 1974. The Memorate and the Protomemorate. Journal of
American Folklore 87:225–239.
Dorson, Richard M. 1952. Bloodstoppers and Bearwalkers: Folk Traditions of the Upper
Peninsula. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Honko, Lauri. 1964. Memorate and the Study of Folk Belief. Journal of the Folklore Institute 1:5–
19.
Pentikainen, Juha. 1973. Belief, Memorate, and Legend. Folklore Forum 6:217–241.
Stahl, Sandra Dolby. 1989. Literary Folkloristics and the Personal Narrative. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
von Sydow, Carl W. [1934] 1948. Categories of Prose Narratives. Selected Papers on Folklore.
Copenhagen, pp. 60–88.
Woods, Barbara Allen. 1959. The Devil in Dog Form: A Partial Type-Index to Devil Legends.
Berkeley: University of California Press.