Myth – Lone Pine

Title: Lone Pine myth

General Information about Item:

  • Genre: Verbal Folklore
    • Subgenre: Myth
  • Language: English
  • Country of origin: USA

Informant Data: Sam Lee ’18 is a 21-year-old male from Turlock, California. He has been rowing since joining light-weight crew in college as a walk-on.

Contextual Data:

Social Context: This myth is told to freshmen by upperclassmen. It can be told by any number of upperclassmen to any number of freshmen at a time; there is no formal or specific location or time to tell it. Freshmen take the story seriously when first hearing it. They often realize later that the story makes no sense in reality.

Cultural Context: This myth ties rowing to Dartmouth culture by connecting Dartmouth’s symbol to their own sport. It incorporates freshmen into the school’s culture. It encourages team bonding and creates excitement for the sport.

Item: This item is a myth describing the origin of crew at Dartmouth. Using the prominent Dartmouth symbol of the Lone Pine, the story connects freshmen to their new home.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTjUjf41xBs&feature=youtu.be

Transcript of Associated File:

Once upon a time, Dartmouth was covered in trees, but as Dartmouth developed and people moved in, they they started to cut down all the trees until Dartmouth was basically a landscape.
But there was one tree and it was by – kind of by where the the statue of Robert Frost is –  there’s a tower there and it’s the one tree that stayed there as the tallest among all the trees. Because all the trees were starting to be cut down, this was like the one tree that was left. It was the Lone Pine. The people of the town of Hanover were really proud of this tree because it was like the one last pine tree that they had after people had cut down all the other ones. And this stood the test of time for like 50 years until one day during a particularly bad storm a lightning bolt came and struck the tree and split it in half, and a lot of people were confused about this, like “What are we gonna do about this? Like this is like our Lone Pine, this is our symbol and it’s now split in half. What should we do with it? Like we should just like cut it down and we should just burn it or something.” And the rowing team at the time realized that this was gonna happen and they decided that one night they were gonna before the town had a chance to cut down the tree they decided that they were going to go out with axes cut down the street and make a boat out of it. And that’s what they did.

Informant’s Comments: There might be more to the story. He has only heard it once before during his freshman year. It might change between people as they tell the story with variations, but he doesn’t know that for sure.

Collector’s Comments: This myth is an etiological myth, as it describes the origin of rowing at Dartmouth. It might be regarded as truth for a moment, but it is more of a sacred story than a story to be followed as actual truth.

Collector’s Name: Sam Gochman

Tags/Keywords: Light-weight rowing, crew, D150, myth, Lone Pine

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