General Information

Informant: LH

Place: Dartmouth College

Date: October 13th, 2021

Form of folklore: Customary, dance

Title: Dances at Dartmouth

Collector: Maria Angelino

Informant Data

The informant is a Dartmouth student in the class of 2025. She wishes to remain anonymous.

Contextual Data

Cultural Data: The “The Salty Dog Rag”, among many others, are dance routines taught to freshmen during their First-Year DOC trips. Upperclassman trip leaders and H-Croo leaders tell the freshman they must learn and memorize the dance for future purposes. They often learn it upon first arriving at Dartmouth and on the last day of trips at Moosilauke Lodge. The freshmen barely know each other, but the dances are intended to bypass the awkwardness and help them embrace the unusual customs that Dartmouth students love. 

Social Data: The folklore was collected 2 months after the informant went on their first-year trips. She was interviewed and asked about her experience. 

Transcript: 

Collector: “How did DOC trips make you feel as a freshman coming into a new environment?”

Informant: “The trip was super important to making me feel more at home. I remember we learned the “Salty Dog Rag” and the one where you are singing in the shower, and there was other fun ones too. It felt very inclusive because nobody knew what they were doing so we were all doing it together. It was a lot of fun trying to come up with how to actually do the dances. I think everyone was super uncomfortable learning the dances, but it really brought us together as a community.”

Collector Comments:

The customary lore of dancing can be very impactful to a culture. In this case, the upperclassmen used dancing as a way to make the freshman feel more connected to the Dartmouth traditions and collective history that the college has.