Myth, legend, fable, fairy tale and folktale – this timeless body of literature, handed down by our ancestors, provides us with a view into our collective past. As we slip back in time to hear the stories that have been told through the ages, we access a window into our evolution. The stories illuminate our past, help us understand the present, and offer guidance for our future. This wondrous treasure should be cherished and carefully passed on to future generations. ~ Rebecca Schacht – from her book Lights along the Path – Jewish Folklore Through the Grades.

Birth of a Project: This project was born out of an assignment for my English class entitled “Folklore.” I had initially approached this area of study with a narrow vision of what it comprised. I imagined a class mainly devoted to the study of fairytales (which I believed to represent the bulk of folklore). I pictured analyzing the meaning of different stories and the role they play in our society. However, I was met with a subject far more diverse than I had thought. The study of folklore covers as varied an array of topics as would any sociology or cultural anthropology course. Under it comes a breadth of topics such as: jokes, local legends, myths, fairytales, proverbs, folklore in literature, folklore in movies, blessings, curses, cuss words, intensifiers, insults, riddles, tongue twisters, catch questions, gestures, folk costumes, campfire activities, folk art, folk medicine, folk metaphors and similes, charms, lullabies, ballads, blues, superstitions, names, epitaphs, rhymes, latrinalia (writing on bathroom walls), autograph verse, limericks, festivals, and customs (Roesch).

As I began to gain a deeper understanding of the subject matter I soon realized that my family had a wonderful example of something that falls into this field of study– a family legend. I had grown up listening to my grandmother tell people this story. It captivated me as a young child and it continues to do so even today. My grandmother had a way of weaving everyday events into incredible tales that could get you hooked listening to her for hours. She was a real storyteller and this story was probably her most well-loved. When I was about eight or ten years old I had the chance to tape record her telling it to me. I have always treasured that recording and its value to me has only grown with her passing. I began to try to think of a way to incorporate her story into my work for this class. On occasion I had thought to myself how few living relatives may still remember this tale. Since my grandmother is no longer with us, I wanted to find a way of somehow preserving it for the younger generations of my family to hear. I saw this project as being threefold in purpose: 1. It would serve as a way for me to explore the topic of family legends in more detail. 2. Also as a vehicle to allow others to learn about my ancestry. 3. It would be a wonderful gift to share with my family. However, I knew that a traditional paper format would simply not do the subject justice and the fact that most my family is on the other side of the continent also posed a serious issue. All the same, my love for this story and determination to preserve it in my grandmother’s memory convinced me to try to make it happen.

The idea of trying to create a website devoted to this story began to grow in me. After a brief conversation with my instructor I was convinced to go for it but I found myself faced with the problem that I really had no idea of how one would go about such a thing. With a visual arts background, it was no problem for me to imagine what I wanted it to look like in the end; the difficulty was finding a way of actually applying those ideas in reality. I had envisioned this project primarily as a space for others to listen to my grandmother tell her tale. The approach I wanted to take was to make it an educational experience, a way for my family to be able to connect to their past, as well as a forum for me to connect with those who may share similar family stories.

The process began as I started to collect as much information as I could in the process of web design. With this underway, one of the first major steps I took was researching the details of the story itself. I wanted to see what evidence I might dig up surrounding the details in the story. I began asking such questions as: had there really been a wealthy English shipbuilder who died leaving a fortune to be claimed? Were there any newspaper reports of missing bank notes, or even birth or death records of some of my Romanian ancestors? Sadly I was unable to find anything. Short of going to Manchester and combing through microfiche in libraries, I was unable to find any evidence of the important elements of the story. However this process did force me to question more deeply how these stories develop. It also made me decide to include the links in the home page to some the family ancestry sites that I had explored. I had spent so much time working with the names that my Bubby mentions - trying to find a “Menachem Mendel” can be like tracking down a John Smith in New York city, I discovered – I thought it was an important aspect to include. This search also brought me closer to my great-grandfather who, in his own time, had mulled over this unknown name. I, on the other hand, did have the advantage of the internet to guide me, as apposed to a dream.

The web pages are all designed with the idea that they will connect those visiting this site with the two time periods that the story covers. The pages are in keeping with the colors of the Romanian flag so that we can remember that heritage and the family photos connect you with the people themselves. I also wanted to include links to information and images of the Depression Era so that people could get closer to the family experiences that could have given birth to this story. I included the links to the Bucharest site so that one can see the information my Bubby provides and the details offered throughout the tale cannot easily be discredited. Reading about that city in those times shows how possible it could have been for this story to really have taken place.

As the above quote suggests my hope is for this project to create a space for this cherished story to be “carefully be passed on to future generations.”

You may want to gain a further understanding of what comes under the study of folklore by visiting <http://www.siskiyous.edu/class/engl12/SUBJECTS.htm> Or why we study Folklore @ http://www.siskiyous.edu/class/engl12/whystudy.htm

Or if you would like to better understand who the “folk” in Folklore are please visit http://www.siskiyous.edu/class/engl12/whoare.htm

Bubby: As I have already mentioned, my Bubby was the storyteller of the family. If I close my eyes to picture her, the image that comes to mind most readily is almost always of her sitting at a table, cigarette ashtray nearby, hands in expansive gesture, deep into telling someone a story. As Rebecca Schacht suggests: “stories illuminate our past, help us understand the present, and offer guidance for our future.” I think my Bubby had a deep sense of this statement. Storytelling was her gift and she was determined to share it with all around her.

She was born in Montreal, Canada in 1920 and when she was only nine years old the stock market crashed, sending the country into what would come to be known as The Great Depression. Although her father managed to keep the family fed and clothed, the times were tough on the family. She had been a good student and was a bright young girl with much potential but at the age of twelve was forced to quit school and get a job in a factory so that the family could afford to continue her two younger brothers’ education (of course the education of men was the priority in those days). The story came to her for the first time at the age of thirteen when a long-lost relative attempted to contact her father. This relative claimed that there was a lost family fortune that together they had the potential to lay claim to. However, as her story goes, because of a certain lack of evidence, and the disadvantage of being poor and Jewish, they eventually had to give up retrieving ‘what was rightfully theirs.’

I had never really understood how this story must have affected my grandmother as a young girl. There she was, only thirteen years old, already working for a living and it was as if someone had dangled an entirely different future under her nose, only to take it away again. What struck me for the first time as I worked on this project was what a story like this would have meant both to her and her other poor family members in those days. It was an expression of their ultimate fantasy come to fruition. It offered an escape from the struggle that was their day-to-day lives.

As I researched I began to understand how circumstances can give birth to these kinds of legends – just as the many urban legends or caution tales express the repressed fear that comes with the urban lifestyle, this story became her way of making peace with circumstances that were beyond her control. She carried it with her to a ripe old age and as she never lived to acquire any great wealth and never was able to finish her education it remained her torch song. This story became the story of her life and was her way of sharing her history.

The Story and My Research: I really wanted to approach my research process from the angle of trying to unearth some truth that had not yet been discovered about this tale. I will admit to sharing in the fantasy – even more than one hundred and fifty years after the fact. I pictured my excitement in coming across something online that proved that there really was a wealthy shipbuilder in Manchester. That’s not to say that I thought I was single-handedly going to track down and lay claim to some great fortune; no, luckily, I gave that up as a young child. It was more the process of learning the real truth that enticed me. I thought how amazing it would be to find out that it all really had happened. I had spent so much time wondering how information can change and details get mixed up over time that I began to question the possibility of whether that “Wealthiest of Shipbuilders” hadn’t really grown out of what was only "Moish", the canoe maker. But sadly, I was unable find a lead in any direction and in retrospect maybe that is for the best. Maybe the point in all of this is to let sleeping dogs lie, for lack of a better expression, and let the legend remain a legend. Maybe that’s the way she would have wanted it.

What Remains/Final Thoughts: Sometimes family legends really serve another higher purpose and that is to enlighten us about our history and by doing so bring us closer to understanding something about ourselves. In the end, what I think I will take away with me from this experience are the lessons it gave me about the lives of the people that I come from and how what they went through lives somewhere in me today. My Bubby’s story is their story and it really means to share a piece of what that history is all about. Although I do still sometimes dream about what other information might come to me through the development of this website, in the end my only hope is that I have created a space for the generations to come to think about these ideas in the same way I did.

Today I see how an inkling of my Bubby’s nature has transferred both into my father and ever so slightly into my own character (as I’m sure my husband would attest to). We are storytellers like she was. We hold the ability to weave a good tale in the highest of esteem. She knew how to give you as much background detail as you could possibly handle. She implemented it as a way of keeping things exciting, to get you hooked, and if the details weren’t there, she, well . . . stretched a little to make the story work. I’m certain that both my father and I, if we were forced to admit it, would confess to being just a little bit guilty of a similar quality.

This web site is a dedication to Sylvia, her life, her gift, her great memory, and her incredible story.

Here I am today with my baby daughter.

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