Example 1. RKM KP 8, 433 < Tallinn Secondary School No. 7 - Kätlin Roose, Form 7.
Memory album and songbook (or these two combined) have been the carriers of written tradition for centuries already. Rhymes, maxims, songs, etc. reflect popular sentimental tones and echo general philosophical beliefs. Moreover, they have always been the exponents of the interests of a circle of friends and the feeling of belonging together. Vello Helk has studied older Estonian album tradition (1973) concluding that the first albums belonged to the Baltic-Germans. The earliest of them, dating from the first decades of the 17th century, belonged to Heinrich von Taube and was above all a travel book. Entries made in different towns and by different people enable us to follow the course of life and friends' circle of certain historical persons from Estonia. In these days, album was used as a letter of recommendation. An entry by a famous person opened quite a few doors in front of a stranger.
The origin of the albums is associated with Germany. German scholars have studied the material the most, but quite a lot of research is carried out in the Scandinavian countries also. Stammbücher reached Finland, for instance, through students who had studied at German universities, and spreaded fast at the beginning of the 16th century (Nuorteva 1983). Albums became popular in countries, where there were stronger cultural bonds with protestant Germany. The dissemination of memory albums tradition supposedly reached Estonia the same way, via Germany. The earliest preserved Finnish albums, written then in German and in Swedish, date back to the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. By then second half of the 19th century, writing memory rhymes to each other in Finnish was already a widespread practice among the common people, and particularly among educated young women. At the turn of the 20th century, memory albums with drawings became popular among schoolchildren (Pettinen 1983).
In Estonia, similar developments took place roughly at the same time. Likewise, keeping of memory rhyme albums became a common practise here by the second half of the 19th century. The earliest manuscript songbooks and memory albums in the Estonian Folklore Archives date back to the middle of the 19th century. More numerously they were collected in the 1930s, later this collection has been somewhat amplified.
The present article is based upon the school folklore of 1992, collected all over Estonia. More than 500 girls answered the questionnaire about songbooks, memory albums and oracles. The most thorough were the responses by girls from older forms (seventh to twelth forms). They copied material from their albums for the Archives, described the kinds of albums they had maintained, how they used them, what did the models look like, etc. Many girls submitted copies of their albums or the originals to the Archives. Altogether more than 6000 pages of such material found their way to the Archives.
I will try, leaving the songbooks aside for the time being, to walk along the way from the memory album to the oracle, together with the girls from different parts of Estonia. The rich material enables to draw several conclusions about various forms of girls' written lore, about genres disseminated in written form, and their functional meaning.
The girls' albums collected during the 1992 competition of school traditions originate from the period starting with the mid 1970s and up to the beginning of 1990. These recent decades have witnessed several changes in the album tradition in Estonia. Different objectives, determined by the album enthusiast's age, produce albums with different profiles. In general, there appear the following categories of memory albums and age groups:
1. Albums of drawings (girls aged 6 to 8(9)).
2. Albums of questions and answers (girls aged 9 to 12 (13)).
3. Oracle albums (girls aged (9)10 to 14 (16)).
Girls' interests and development can well be followed with the help of these albums.
Album of Drawings
Girls usually start with the drawing album in the first form, at the age of six or seven. A few children declared that they maintain albums of drawings since kindergarten already (RKM KP 10, 167). In the first forms these albums are evidently very popular. It is hard to find a girl who does not have one. According to the material in the Archives, the general interest lasts till the age of nine (till the third or fourth form). In the first two forms girls and boys do not pay attention to the sexual differences. They play the same games together, they are friends, and both also keep albums of drawings, which are quite alike. No particular requirements are placed to the contributor (the writer; the drawer). The group of contributors is wide: children from the same form, family members (mother, grandmother), girlfriends, teachers or relatives. Some pictures are drawn by the owner, but usually the main contributors are children of the same age. During the primary school years, girls manage to fill several albums.
The boom of albums of drawings was at its peak in the second and third form. Every girl in our class had one. Some even had two or three, so it was possible to give them to different people at the same time. (RKM KP 42, 278 <Tallinn Secondary School No. 12 - Evelin Kivimaa, Form 11.)
In the younger girls' memory albums, the main emphasis does not lie on the memory rhymes but on the visual side. In many cases it is only an album of drawings, including also some rhymes. The most popular rhymes in the memory albums of the younger age groups are:
| Õpi, õpi hoolega, | Study hard, |
| siis saad kohvi koorega. | then you get coffee with cream. |
| Mäleta mind alati, | Remember me always, |
| muidu teen sust salati! | otherwise I'll make a salad out of you. |
| Mälestuseks määrin ma | To remember me, |
| musta kassi sabaga. | I'll make a blur with a black cat's tail. |
| Ela ilmas kui lind, | Live in the world as a bird, |
| pea meeles ka mind! | but remember also me! |
| Kolm sõna sulle - | Three words to you - |
| jää sõbraks mullle! | remain my friend! |
| Kivist jääb ase, | A mark remains of a stone, |
| puust jääb känd, | a stump remains of a tree, |
| minust väike mälestus. | of me a little memory will remain. |
| Sa valge peaga plika | You, girl with blond hair |
| mul meeles seisad ikka. | I will always remember you. |
| Sul peas on mustad lokid | You have black locks |
| ja jalas valged sokid. | and you wear white socks. |
| Et oli nõnda pime | As it was so dark, |
| ei näind kirjutada nime. | I couldn't write my name. |
| Valges vahus voolab vesi, | As water flows in white foam, |
| ei ta iial ära väsi - | it never gets tired - |
| nõnda Mari sinagi | thus you, Mari, |
| tõtta elus edasi! | rush on in your life! |
Most of these rhymes were already popular during the first half of this century. Nowadays they are such favourites of little girls that they recur even in the same album. In the end of the last century and at the beginning of this one, wet transfers and graphic pencil drawings were used as illustrations, during the last four decades colourful pictures predominate. Modern albums of smaller girls present beautiful images of girls, little kitties, puppies, flowers and characters from children books and cartoons. Most popular are the characters by Walt Disney. For a little child something that can be seen is more important than something that can be heard or read, the joy of creation counts here. An album of a little girl is like a small self-composed fairytale, enjoyable to the child.
Almost every girl has or had an album once. In the first three forms it was mostly used for drawing and simply decorating, only sometimes some rhymes were also written. I remember how wonderful it was to get a beautiful, carefully drawn picture as a present. Even now it is interesting to browse these albums, though the rhymes appear now silly, and those that made you laugh once are no longer funny. (RKM KP 6, 83 < Loksa Secondary School No. 1 - Ive Vikström, Form 10.)
According to the material documented in the Estonian Folklore Archives, the age of the album-keepers started to decrease at the beginning of this century. The first teenage albums with lots of pictures and drawings date back to the first decades of this century, but the albums from the 1930s can be compared with the albums of drawings of today's schoolgirls. This seems to be a widespread process in Europe and in Scandinavian countries (Penttinen 1988:25; Enerstvedt 1987:79). Till the 1950s, the album-keepers in Estonia were mostly young teenage girls. The final breakthrough took place in the 60s probably, when it became extremely popular among primary school children.
Album of Rhymes and Album of Questions and Answers
At the beginning of the third or fourth form (at the age of eight or nine) the girls' interest towards maintaining an album decreases. Boys no longer take part in it, and the albums circulate only among certain groups. Girls of the same playgroup also exchange albums. Starting from this age album keeping becomes a phenomenon that strengthens the relationship between girls, but it is also applied to cut out those who do not belong to the circle of friends (Lipponen 1992:150). This is the age when belonging to a peer group becomes vitally important to every girl. Girls detach themselves from the boys, a new stage begins in their life, they start to learn a new role.
The older girls' albums include the same rhymes as those of the younger girls, though totally new genres occur: aphorisms, proverbs, quotations. The main topic is love, and the relationship between boys and girls are handled quite humorously. For example:
| Elu on ilus, | Life is beautiful, |
| elu on valus, | life hurts, |
| ilus poiss on elu alus. | a pretty boy is the basis of life. |
| Algul sinu suured kõrvad | At first your big ears |
| tegid nalja minule, | made me laugh, |
| pärast sinu sinisilmad | then your blue eyes |
| võitsid minu südame. | conquered my heart. |
| Ela ilmas õnnega, | Live happily in the world, |
| peksa poisse panniga. | beat the boys with a frying pan. |
On one page several rhymes are written. The format of an album has also enlarged. Often the photo of the contributor is added to the drawings and stickers.
At this age girls start to maintain an album (or notebook) of questions and answers. In different schools those are called by different names. Usually they are known as albums of questions and answers, albums of triangles, characterization albums or secret albums. At Keila Secondary School No. 1 they were known as vissad-vassad; at Narva Estonian Secondary School they were known as diaries of friends, or, following the example of Russian girls - as questionnaires (ankeet); at Viljandi Secondary School No. 4 as pistekad.
To the traditional approach (write a poem, draw a picture) there is added a playful personal questionnaire "I want to know more about you." The questions asked by the owner are repeated from album to album and at the beginning they are quite innocent: name, age, phone number, favourite food, movie, actor; but at the end, the questions are often quite cunning: your favourite boy, your favourite girl, what do you think of me, etc. Usually these questions vary, but the last ones always include something discreet. Answers to the last questions can be written in a folded triangle or in a closed envelope and thus concealed from strangers (hence the names `secret album' and `album of triangles'). And the contributor may add a humorous condition, after which the hidden message can be revealed.
Triangles. They are albums that consist of all kinds of questions. I'll add some pages to show. I've kept them from 1987 till last year (Forms 4 to 8 - EK). With these people tried to find out the secrets of the others. (RKM KP 41, 120 < Tallinn Secondary School No. 32 - Merle Ollik, Form 9.)
These albums (notebooks) are differently connected with the general album tradition. In many cases the memory rhymes and the design form integral parts of the answers, but, on the other hand, the main emphasis may lie on the questionnaire and then the design is more moderate. Sometimes the function of a memento is confirmed by the photo of the contributor. There may be also various kinds of playful additional tasks in an album of questions and answers (for example, KP 39, page 283: Land of Kisses, Sea of Signatures, Add One More Dash). This has probably been added to give more creative joy to the contributors, as there are no objections to write poems or to illustrate these albums.
Questions are usually answered by the girls of the same age group. In the albums containing only the questionnaire (without rhymes), the answers may be provided by boys as well. According to the general tendency the albums of younger girls (from age nine to eleven) are more connected with the album tradition. There the tricky personal questions are missing, the pages are distinctively illustrated and replenished with memory rhymes (see Example 1). In the albums of girls aged twelve to thirteen, the main emphasis lies on the questions, whereas the respondent may add also some decorative elements.
Playfulness and fooling also occurs in some of the albums that date back to the beginning of this century, secrets are hidden behind folded corners, mirror script is used (ERA II 20, RKM AK 275). The contemporary albums have reached a playful variety within the past twenty years, though.
At the beginning the albums of questions and answers spread sporadically in Estonia and became general in the 1970s. The questionnaire about school traditions shows that the older girls' album hobby has become more moderate. Time will tell whether the same changes will happen here as they happened in our neighbouring country, Finland, where the printed friend's books (Ystäväni kirjat), started to replace the albums in the 50s (Virtanen 1988:287). Some of the Finnish booklets circulated also among Estonian schoolchildren in 1992 (RKM KP 51, 374-376). In 1993 the first printed booklet of questions and answers Meie klass `Our class' was published in Estonia (by Egmont Estonia 1993) where apart from the place for one's photo and answers to the questions there was also space for a poem or drawing.
I have had several rhyme albums. They are maintained and not thrown away. Pistekad (`questionnaires') lose their value pretty fast. (RKM KP 25, 211 < Viljandi Secondary School No. 4 - Katrin Volens, Form 10.)
Girls also write each other letters, presenting such questions-answers in order to get to know more about one's friend. Pistekad in Viljandi Secondary School No. 4 has probably got its name from the Steckbrief of their German penfriends (RKM KP 25, 214 < Viljandi Secondary School No. 4 - Katrin Volens, Form 10). This kind of play in the form of a questionnaire has probably been supported by the correspondence with foreign penfriends.
Oracle Album
A group of girls is joined by the same secrets, they talk about their feelings and confess their secret wishes to each other. Teenage girls keep diaries where they write down their adolescent problems. Oracle albums are a special kind of girls' diaries.
Such collections of written lore have different functions and intricate compositions. Girls themselves call them oracle albums, secret albums or love albums (notebooks). The girls who keep them are ten to sixteen years old. The competition of collecting school traditions gave a good survey of the oracles, about 50 original or copied albums of this kind were submitted to the Estonian Folklore Archives. It seems that in the beginning of the 90s keeping of these albums was very popular among teenagers. This tradition had spread in each school participating at the competition. These albums are usually very original, compiled and illustrated by the owner. To enrich one's album, suitable stories from a friend's album are copied. In the design photos of popular actors, singers and models are used. The owner binds the texts together with an original touch, using self-drawn colourful hearts, chains, and other images, different writing styles, decorated initials etc.
Secret notebooks were definitely kept by girls in forms 4 to 10. These contained lots of things that girls were interested in. E.g.: The meaning of days, sneezes, the colour of eyes and hair, the colour of rings, meaning of different kinds of handshaking, gifts and their meaning, some stories, interpretation of dreams, meaning of eye blinking, significance of flowers, etc. Albums were decorated with drawings and various clippings. (RKM KP 6, 9 < Harjumaa, Loksa Secondary School - Marge Aug, Form 10.)
Oracle albums include most of the written lore disseminated among girls (except chain letters, congratulation rhymes, graffiti, droodles). Girls' oracle albums have a definite content (Kalmre 1993:5-9), such as predictions, interpretations, oracles, older images of folk religion, album rhymes, maxims, single songs or their parodies, stories about sex and romantic love, some funny stories that spread only in written form, news on pop-bands, knowledge about cosmetics, etiquette, newspaper clippings, etc. (see Examples 2-4).
This kind of classification started to take shape at the end of the last century when the language of flowers and stamps, instructions how to tell fortune by cards, language of colours, parlour games, romantic love stories and etiquette appeared in songbooks and memory albums. A lot of funny stories and sex descriptions in current girls' albums date back to the soldiers' songbooks and memory albums of the 1920s and 30s. Girls have borrowed more contemporary material from slogans of student building camps of the 1970s and 80s, also from the funny stories copied from the handwritten wedding newspapers.
The first oracle album similar to the contemporary albums in the Estonian Folklore Archives dates back to 1929-1930 (ERA AK 297). From every following decade there is only one copy preserved in the Archives. So there is not much available to compare the material submitted in during the competition with. We may only guess that oracle albums and albums of questions and answers became so general only during the last twenty years.
Oracle albums have different meanings for girls. Predictions, oracles and telling the future by cards denote an exciting play for them that younger girls sometimes also share with boys. But in one elusive moment the play mingles with belief. Leea Virtanen has characterized the magic of childhood as the complex of predictions that creates safety. Prediction games in these albums carry the same objective.
An entertaining album of oracles is a bearer of traditions, but it also appears to be an informal source of information about teenage girls, their needs, interests and moods. That is particularly the age when a girl begins to grow into a woman. Psychologists say that men's generic character starts on physical level, women's - on psychic level, which provides an angle for understanding the girls' fancy for such albums. The majority of album topics concern the relationship between men and women, boys and girls, and everything that goes with it. Moods change fast in these albums. Maintaining of these albums is a binding factor between certain groups of girls, but also between generations. Mothers' and grandmothers' albums are often taken as examples.
Some girls still had their mothers' old songbooks and that is how it all began. "Love albums" were started the same way. Of course, it was all a secret and this added much excitement. Only some mothers, who once had kept such albums themselves, knew about it. We always carried them with us to school and covertly copied some things from each other's albums. The design was very colourful and most drawings and writings were done in crayons. Obviously, I also glued in lots of clippings. (RKM KP 41, 356 < Tallinn Secondary School No. 60 - Kristiina Mihkelsoo, Form 8.)
Conclusion
Album tradition remained unchanged for centuries. One cause of the change during the last twenty years is probably due to the acceleration phenomena affecting our society. Girls' childhood shortens gradually, those younger still start to take interest in adult problems. The maintaining of memory albums, songbooks, and oracle albums denote girls' creative and gradual movement from a simpler form of written tradition to the more complicated one. Through the prism of albums, a child's interests and development can easily be followed. At first there is the album of drawings with some rhymes, then there appear the more particular memory album of rhymes and the album of questions and answers, where play is added to the function of remembering as a kind of training in social relations. The last stage are oracle albums. They include play, pastime, knowledge, belief and psychological preparation for the future life all at the same time. Leaving aside the massive enthusiasm for drawing albums at the earlier age, it is significant that the most active age group who keeps memory albums and oracle albums are nine to fourteen years old.
Bengt af Klintberg has noticed a slow decline in the album poetry during the last 50 years. It concerns the rejuvenation of the owners and albums do not contain the memory of true friendship any more (Klintberg 1978:69). The same applies to Estonian material, and we may observe the continual growth of the comic role in these albums. During the last twenty years girls' albums have become more playful and humorous. At the same time they are quite conservative in their main content. Most of the rhymes, prediction games, oracles, funny stories, etc., originate from the 1920s and 30s and even from an earlier period.
Estonian Foklore Archives
Tartu, Estonia
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