Title: The Engineer and the Frog Princess (Eric Hansen)

General Information about Item:

• Verbal lore, joke
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Eric Hansen
• Date Collected: 5-30-19

Informant Data:

• Eric Hansen is a engineering professor at Dartmouth College. He teaches a number of classes at Dartmouth, including ENGS 23, Distributed Systems and Fields and ENGS 31, Digital Electronics. He grew up in California, and many members of his family and community were Scandinavian. His family has a tradition of storytelling, influenced by traditional tales such as the Icelandic Sagas.

Contextual Data:

• Cultural Context: The joke plays on traditional engineering stereotypes, such as lack of interest or skill in romantic relationships. It also reflects the fact the engineering has traditionally been male dominated. The informant’s family has a tradition of telling stories, which has influenced the narrative form of the informant’s version of this joke. This joke is also influenced by the fairy tale “The Frog Prince” collected by the Brothers Grimm. There are also other versions of the story that have the genders reversed.
• Social Context: This joke was recorded during an in-person interview with the informant. The informant was not sure where he had first heard this joke, but he thinks it was after he was a student. He may have told the joke in a classroom setting, but the informant considered the joke to be part of his family folklore.

Item:

Interview Recording:

Transcript of joke:

• (2:34) “There was a guy walking through the woods one day, enjoying…, you know, going somewhere, and, um, he was addressed by a frog by the side of the road, and the frog said ‘hey!, hey!’, and he looks at the frog and the frog says, ‘hey I want to talk to you’, and the guy says, ‘oh, what about?’, and the frog says, ‘I am actually a beautiful princess and a wicked sorcerer put a spell on me and turned me into a frog, but if you kiss me I will turn back into a human and we will live happily ever after,’ and the guy says, ‘oh,’ and he picks up the frog and puts it in his pocket and keeps walking on his way. And a little while later he hears this voice, ‘oeer, oeer’ coming out of his pocket. He pulls the frog out and the frog repeats the speech, and, um, that ‘I’m a beautiful princess and I have been transformed into a frog by a wicked sorcerer and if you only kiss me I will turn back into a princess and we will live happily ever after’, and the guy smiles and puts the frog back into his pocket, and a few more hundred yards down the road, um, the frog is very insistent, kind of jumping around in his pocket trying to get his attention, and he takes the frog out and says ‘yeah, what?’ and the frog says, ‘no, you don’t understand, I really am a princess and I really was turned into a frog by an evil sorcerer and if you only kiss me I will turn into…, back into a princess and we’ll live happily ever after’ and the guy finally looks at the frog and says, ‘look, I’m an engineer, I haven’t got time for a relationship, but I think a talking frog is pretty cool.'”

Informant’s Comments:

• The informant was concerned that this joke could be viewed as sexist, and stated that the genders could easily be swapped, but he told it in the way he originally heard it. He credits the narrative style of the joke to his family’s tradition of storytelling.

Collector’s Comments:

• This is very similar to the joke collected from Sal LaRussa, except it is longer and takes a narrative form. The interaction with the frog is trebled, as is common in folk tales. The wording of the punchline is nearly identical.

Collector’s Name: Ben Wolsieffer

Tags/Keywords:

• Verbal Folklore
• Joke
• Stereotype