Sophie Ragg
Dartmouth College
May 15th, 2019
Customary Lore
Christmas Dog Walk with Village
Informant Data: Sophie Ragg is a Dartmouth College ’22 from Wilsborough Green, England. Sophie spends Christmas with her family and friends of her village each year and she explained that Christmas is her “favorite day of the year” because of all the great memories she has made on this day.
Contextual Date: I collected this folklore from Sophie in the library at Dartmouth College through a voice recording. Her entire village in England has a tradition where they all go for a dog walk on Christmas afternoon and end at the pub. Her family has been doing this ever since she can remember. This ritual has vastly impacted Sophie’s life as she explains it to be her “favorite day of the year.” Sophie lives in an extremely small village in England where everyone knows and looks out for one another and it is a staple in her village to have animals. For example, Sophie has over 15 different kinds of animals other than dogs so this shows the importance and regularity of having animals in her village.
Item: This is a verbatim description of the item of folklore told by Sophie. I used a voice recorder to collect this folklore and I think the way she describes the ritual of going on a dog walk each year and what it means to her was one-of-a-kind, “One thing we always do is that we go for a long dog walk on Christmas with all of our friend’s dogs and our friends and it is really nice. There will be like fifty of us, literally everyone in the village. And we always end in the pub. Usually a diff family hosts every year so we will turn up to their house and then we all go on the dog walk and it’s probably about 10-15 families. All the kids bring their favorite present so they can play with it. Then we get to the pub and the pub always serves hot food like soup or something. There was one year where there was a huge power cut so nobody could cook any food or use any electricity so that year everyone went to the pub and it was so cute they had like a big generator and they were serving soup for everybody and we all just sat huddled around in the pub with candles. It was an amazing Christmas although it wasn’t too different from the other Christmases because we always end at the pub anyway. But this year was all the more special because we brought our dogs to the pub and we were able to focus on the dogs and family, just the way it should be.”
Lilly Durbin
20-years-old
27189 Pumpkin Street
Dartmouth College
Russian 13
Spring Term 2019