Galoot of a Culture meets ICH

Last weekend, I did a radio interview with Angela Antle on CBC Radio's Weekend Arts Magazine, and they've placed the interview online.

The following is taken from the WAM website:

Dale Jarvis is well known to many of you as the man who walks the streets at night leading the Haunted Hike. Dale is also an avid storyteller and the author of several books of tall tales and ghost stories. Dale Jarvis has worked for years in various roles at the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador. Now he has a new gig there...one he says is a dream job. Dale Jarvis is the first Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Development Officer for the province. And maybe the only one in Canada. Listen to this audio feature.

Newfoundland and Labrador Hires First Provincial Folklorist

Newfoundland and Labrador has recently created a position for its first provincial folklorist. With the support of the provincial government, the Heritage Foundation of Newfoundland and Labrador (HFNL) has hired Dale Jarvis as the first Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) Development Officer for the province.

Jarvis has worked for 13 years with HFNL, having completed his Folklore MA at Memorial. He brings to the position involvement in local storytelling festivals and events, as well as a wide knowledge of the local heritage community. Jarvis is the author of two popular books on Newfoundland and Labrador folklore and ghost stories, and a third book of world ghost stories for young adult readers.

“This is a dream job for me,” says Jarvis. “It brings together a lot of my interests, and I am very excited about the potential for this program. The living culture and tradition of the province is one of our greatest resources. I am delighted that I will be involved in helping document, conserve and encourage those aspects of our heritage.”

The position of ICH Development Officer is the fruition of six years of work in the province, drawing on the work of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), including its 2003 Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage.

In 2002, Dr. Gerald Pocius of Memorial University’s Folklore Department was involved in consultations on an early draft of the UNESCO Convention. Over the past six years, Pocius has been working with various provincial government agencies on policies and programs. Anita Best, another MUN Folklore Department graduate, worked for the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador in getting ICH as one of the main heritage priorities in the province’s “Cultural Blueprint: Creative Newfoundland and Labrador,” released in 2006.

During that same year, the Association of Heritage Industries organized its annual meeting in St. John’s around the theme of ICH, with speakers from the Smithsonian, the American Folklife Center, and the ICH section of UNESCO. Memorial University’s Folklore Department continues to conduct a pilot inventory project in cooperation with the provincial government, and has committed to assist in developing training and documentation programs for the province in the future.

“The ICH program for Newfoundland and Labrador has great promise,” Jarvis enthuses. “ICH is all around us, in everything we do: in our stories, our languages, the songs we sing, the crafts we produce, and in the knowledge people have about the land and sea that our history and culture is based upon.”

Jarvis has started an internet blog site to keep people informed on the work of the provincial folklorist position, which can be found at http://doodledaddle.blogspot.com/.

“What is a doodle-daddle, and what does it have to do with folklore and intangible cultural heritage?” Jarvis asks with a laugh. “Check out the blog, find out, and share your stories!”

The new provincial folklorist can be reached by telephone at 1-888-739-1892, or by email at ich@heritagefoundation.ca

What is a doodle-daddle?

Doodle-Daddle:

loodle-laddle (n) also doodle-laddle, oodle-addle. A contraption; esp a deliberately humorous or evasive name given to an object in order to puzzle a child. C 71-94 When a man was making something and some curious boy asked him what he was making the man always told him that he was making an oodle-addle. P 245-77 Do you know what we call that drain pipe? We call it the oodle-addle. P 30-79 My mother used to tease me by saying that a doodle laddle was a machine for catching wild ducks. - quoted from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English Online

When I was a kid the way I first heard the idea of “thing-a-ma-jig” was “doodle-daddle for stirrin’ doughb’ys.” It was always like that, the whole phrase, and it came out together like one long word. If my father had something in his hand like a big bolt that I didn’t recognize, and I asked him what it was, and he didn’t care to go into it, he’d say, “This is a doodle-daddle-fer-stirrin’-doughb’ys.” I understood that what he meant is the same as “thingie,” but I must have been 20 before I separated the words out in my head and understood the word “stirrin’” as “stirring” and started to get an image of a utensil stirring dumplings -- a doodle-daddle for stirring dougboys. - Lara Maynard, Torbay, 2008.

So now that you know what it is, why doodle-daddle? I've chosen the word as the blog title in part because of its wonderful, poetic alliterative quality, in part because it is one of those old Newfoundland expresions that in themselves are worthy of conservation as pieces of our intangible cultural heritage, in part because it is the type of word that generates discussion, stories and smiles, and in part because it is a word about words, which links the things that we create with the culture that creates, shares and transmits the ideas about those things.

Do you have a memory of someone using the phrase "doodle-daddle"? If you do, post a message below, and share your story!