General Information about Item:

• Customary Lore, Verbal Lore, Ritual, Chant
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: Germany
• Informant: Linda Essery
• Date Collected: 2/23/18

Informant Data:

• Linda Essery was born in Friedrichshafen, Germany. She then moved to Raleigh, NC and now currently lives in Rockfall, CT. Linda is a freshman at Dartmouth College and attended Loomis Chaffee Prep for high school. She has three brothers and loves dogs.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: Handshakes are performed between two of more people.  They usually involve the participants’ hands, but can also involve their entire bodies. There are formal handshakes and informal handshakes. Informal handshakes are a representation of creativity and companionship.
• Social Context: Many players on the women’s ice hockey team, at Dartmouth College, have one or more handshakes/chants with other players. Some are bequested, meaning passed down from older players who have now graduated, some are simple, and some are very elaborate. There are three minutes in the locker room before every time players go on to the ice, and that time is very special to most of the team. A lot of players use this time to get pumped up by the music and to perform their handshakes and rituals.

Item:

• In the locker room before the team takes the ice, Linda finds her teammate Alyssa Baker, a junior, and they perform a special handshake. The two of them both bring their hands together and hit the front and back of each other’s hands, while their own remain together. After they each hit both sides, they then bring their connected hands to touch each others at the finger tips directly in front of them. After this is done Linda says, “I don’t need luck, I’m with Baker.” Baker then replies, “I don’t need luck, I’m with Linda.”

Transcript:

• “I love this handshake the most because Baker is awesome and such a role mode… it felt so good to have her want a handshake with me. It’s pretty simple and the saying is awesome because we kind of took it from Harry Potter.”

Informant’s Comments:

• Linda feels that this handshake is very special because it makes her feel welcomed and loved on the team.

Collector’s Comments:

• I found it really interesting that the two of them incorporate something from Harry Potter into their handshake. There is a lot of folklore in the Harry Potter books and now it is being represented in folklore we collected too.

Collector’s Name: Kate Landers

Tags/Keywords:

• Customary Lore
• Verbal Lore
• Chant
• Ritual- Handshake
• Harry Potter
• “I Don’t Need Luck”