Mormon Folklore

I’d like to share something I learned while studying folkloristics and see if anyone finds it as interesting (and eventually challenging) as I did.

While the number three is not the only important number in western culture, Folklorist Alan Dundes argued that it is the most important number. In the traditional western worldview, the number three gives a sense of completeness. The repetative occurance of the number three has been called at times “fingerprints of human creation.” We speak in three patterns, we organize information in three patterns – we think of a “beginning, a middle, and an end.” The examples are many and varied:

Row, row, row your boat. Third time’s a charm. Three strikes, you’re out. Up up and away. Go, fight, win. JFK USA FBI KKK ABC’s Beg, Borrow, or Steal Tall, Dark, and Handsome Past, Present, Future Small, Medium, Large 02, May, 2006 (Month, Day, Year)
GENERAL STATEMENTS ABOUT THE NATURE OF “THREES”
The following general statements about the nature of three-pattern may be of interest (click here to read Dundes’ entire essay):

(1) Often three appears to be an absolute limit; there are three terms or three categories and no more. In folk speech one can give three cheers for someone, but not two or four. (And each cheer may consist of “Hip, Hip, Hooray.”) The starter for a race will say “One, two, three, go.” He will not count to two or four. (Cf. the three commands “On your mark, get set, go.”) The alphabet is referred to as the ABCs and in the common folk simile, something is as easy as ABC; one does not speak of learning his ABs or his ABCDs.

(2) If there are more than three terms, the additional terms will be defined primarily in terms of one of the three basic terms, usually one of the extremes. For example, in shirt sizes, one finds small, medium, and large. The size “extra-large” is certainly linguistically and very probably conceptually derived from “large,” rather than possessing separate individual status.

(3) One source of three-patterns consists of positions located in reference to some initial point. The golfer tries to shoot par for the course. He may, however, shoot “under” par or “over” par. In music, the point of reference may be “middle C,” which serves, for example, as a midpoint between the base and treble clefs in addition to functioning as a point of reference from which to describe voice ranges (e.g., “two octaves above middle C”).

(4) On the other hand, a third term may be the result of splitting a polarity. If A and B represent two extremes, then a three-pattern may be achieved by establishing their average, median, or mean as a midpoint. Or if “early” and “late” represented extremes in describing arrivals and departures, then “on time” would presumably be the midpoint. Obviously, in some instances, it is difficult to say whether the midpoint or the extremes came first.

(5) Another common means of three-pattern formation is the merging or combining of two terms so that one has 1) A, 2) B, and 3) AB. In Robert’s Rules of Order it is stated that “an amendment may be in any of the following forms: (a) to insert or add, (b) to strike out, or (c) to strike out and insert.” In theory, any polarity can be converted to a three-pattern by this or the immediately preceding principle. Moreover, it is decidedly easier to move from two to three than from three to two. The majority of the most common trichotomic schemes in American culture could not easily be put into a dichotomic mold.

(6) The strength of the three-pattern tendency is indicated in part by its “repetition compulsion.” In a considerable number of tripartite schemes, each of the three units in question may itself be divided into three parts. Each of these parts may in turn be broken down into three subdivisions and so on almost ad infinitum.

(7) A final generalization concerns the special case of the triune or the three-in-one. In some trichotomies the three subdivisions are not separate and independent; instead they are part of a whole. The doctrine of the Trinity as opposed to a doctrine of tritheism illustrates this form of three-pattern.

The questions that I have: