Folklore plays role for LDS

LOGAN — William "Bert" Wilson tells a tale from the early days of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Two missionaries who are spreading the gospel in an area hostile to Mormons find a house in which to spend the night. Before long, a mob carrying lanterns and pitchforks shows up, marches the elders to a wooded area and puts nooses around their necks.

Just as the mob is ready to string up the missionaries, the lanterns mysteriously go out. The missionaries throw off the nooses and hide in the forest.

Despite almost stepping on them, the mob members do not find them and the missionaries survive to carry on their work.

Then Wilson tells a modern version of the same story. Two missionaries are going door-to-door in a bad neighborhood when gang members with knives and chains accost them.

The elders jump in their car to escape, but the car won't start. They say a quick prayer as the gang members close in, and then they're able to start the car.

After they get away, the missionaries look under the hood to see if they can figure out why the car wouldn't start. To their surprise, they find the car's battery is missing.

Even though the stories may not be historically accurate, they are true in the sense that they describe the values and beliefs of LDS culture, said Wilson, a professor emeritus from Utah State and Brigham Young universities who specializes in folklore. Speaking recently to an estimated 800 people at the Logan LDS Tabernacle, Wilson said such folktales affirm beliefs that people doing the Lord's work receive divine protection.

"It's a rhetorical strategy designed to persuade the audience to accept a certain point of view or to follow a certain course of action," Wilson said.

In another tale, a husband and wife leave their 4-year-old daughter with a baby sitter while they are being baptized for the dead at a temple. (Latter-day Saints perform vicarious baptisms for the dead in their temples with the belief that such ordinances are required for exaltation in heaven after death.) The wife has a bad feeling, and she and her husband rush home to find an ambulance and police car in their driveway. The crying baby sitter tells them their daughter disappeared and her doll was found next to a nearby stream. But the mother notices wet footprints on the stairs, follows them to the girl's bedroom and finds the child asleep in a closet.

The girl says she was pulled from the stream by an elderly lady dressed in white who gave her a note with her name on it. The name on the note is the name of a dead woman for whom her mother had performed a proxy baptism.