Author Archives: aehaagen@usc.edu

Persian Proverb: Karmas

My grandmother used to have a wealth of Persian proverbs that she would tell me and my other cousins in both Farsi and in English. It was a way for her to help instill within us moral and social lessons but also a way to facilitate language learning; for her she was practicing her English, while for my cousins and I, it was a way for use to get more exposure listening and speaking Farsi. There were seemingly endless proverbs that she would have on hand at any given moment to meet the unique circumstances of a situation, which I thought was quite comedic. Still, there is one that I would like to include in this collection because it is the only one I can remember that relates back to ancient folktales, one about the richness of the Tigris River.

The proverb my grandmother would say is, “give charity to the river Tigris, God will return that charity in the barren desert.” Essentially it is stating that one when puts effort or kindness into certain situations, that effort and kindness is likely to return to them at another time, kind of like the idea of karma coming back to return the energy one puts out into the universe through one’s deeds. In English, it is typically states as “what goes around comes around.” I wanted to find the actual translation of this into Farsai and found a site that had a similar one. It reads to niki mikon o dar dejle andāz ke izad dar biyābānat dahad bāz, or the literal translation of “you toss charity in the Tigris, and God shall return it in the desert.”

Although the proverb itself speaks of a monotheist God, for my family we assumed it was the Hebrew God, but it is also interpreted as the Christian God or Allah in Islam. However, the mentioning of the divine origins of the Tigris River actually harkens back to ancient Sumerian and Hittite folktales and mythology. The Tigris River is supposed to be an extension of the early pagan gods, with the Hittite culture believing it was actually a god in and of itself. Through good acts that pleased the god, the river would provide enough water for good farming seasons. Yet, if the people displeased the god, the river would enter into a period of drought or flooding, either one would bring destruction and instability to the population. This folktale does border on more of religious mythology, but I find that its survival through the ages has allowed it to transcend the dogma of a single religion. Instead, it has entered into the realm of folk mythology because even as the ancient religions faded away, there was still a connection to pleasing some force in order to receive positive results from the river.

Source: University of Texas at Austin. “Proverbs & Maxims.” https://sites.la.utexas.edu/persian_online_resources/proverbs/

Song: “Johnny Appleseed”

In my search for music that connected with American folk stories, I found a 2001 song written and recorded by Joe Strummer called “Johnny Appleseed.” The song was recorded by Sony Music and released by Universal on the album Global a Go-Go. It is a pretty catchy song that uses a guitar riff and keyboard as its main instruments to set the melody. Then, Strummer comes in with an acoustic guitar, which makes it feel much more authentic as a folk song because it is reminiscent of earlier blue grass music that often-used themes associated with folk tales. The lyrics are as follows:

Lord, there goes Johnny Appleseed/

He might pass by in the hour of need/

There’s a lot of souls/

Ain’t drinking from the well locked in a factory.

 

Chorus:

Hey, look there goes/

Hey, look there goes/

If you’re after getting the honey, hey/

Then you don’t go killing all the bees.

 

Lord, there goes Martin Luther King/

Notice how the door closes when the chimes of freedom ring/

I hear what you’re saying, I hear what he’s saying/

Is what was true now no longer so.

 

Chorus

 

What the people are saying/

And we know every road, go, go/

What the people are saying/

There ain’t no berries on the trees/

Let the summertime sun/

(Fall on the apple) Fall on the apple.

 

Lord, there goes a Buick forty-nine/

Black sheep of the angels riding, riding down the line/

We think there is a soul, we don’t know/

That soul is hard to find.

 

Chorus

 

Hey, it’s what the people are saying/

It’s what the people are saying/

Hey, there ain’t no berries on the trees/

Hey, that’s what the people are saying, no berries on the trees/

You’re checking out the honey, baby/

You had to go killin’ all the bees.

 

Johnny Appleseed is only mentioned in the first stanza of the song, but it aims to set a foundation for discussing other major figures that are associated with kindness and giving, like Martin Luther King. Overall, the song clearly uses the Johnny Appleseed reference as a way to comment against global warming and the polluting the environment. Appleseed is a figure who brought apple seeds to the Northeast, therefore helping provide a source of food and livelihood to poor farmers. He represents an agricultural entrepreneurship that was more in-tune and respectful of nature. Strummer contrasts this myth with the modern state of American society and its destructive forces on nature, like “killing all the bees.” It exposes how American society has changed for the worse and is polluting the natural environment that once served as a source of national pride.

Source: Strummer, Joe, “Johnny Appleseed.” Global a Go-Go. Sony Music. 2001.

 

 

Song: American Folklore

Along with film, music has often been a major part of keeping folklore alive in the modern era. There are a number of myths and folklore that are the subject of modern and earlier songs. The one I want to focus on here is a song about a great American folk hero, the Kentucky Headhunters “The Ballad of Davey Crocket.” The song was released in 1991 and is a country ballad that pays homage to Davey Crocket. The lyrics are as follows:

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee/

The greenest state in the land of the free/

Raised in the woods so he knew every tree/

Killed him a bear when he was only three

Davey, Davey Crockett King of the wild frontier/

Davey, Davey Crockett King of the wild frontier.

 

Up through the woods he’s a marching along/

Makin’ up yarns and singing a song/

Itching for a fight and righting a wrong/

Crazy as a bear and twice as strong/

Davey, Davey Crockett King of the wild frontier/

Davey, Davey Crockett King of the wild frontier.

 

His land is biggest and his land is best/

From grassy plains to the mountain crest/

He’s ahead of us all a beating the test/

He follows his legend into the west/

Davey, Davey Crockett King of the wild frontier/

Davey, Davey Crockett King of the wild frontier/

Davey, Davey Crockett King…of…the…wild…frontier.

 

This is an interesting piece because it intertwines real history with American folklore. Davey Crocket was a real historic figure during the expansion period in the early 19th century. He was a frontiersman that later made a name for himself in the U.S. House of Representatives, coming to embody the notion of a self-made American type hero. The song does touch on actual events in order to connect the real man with the myth. It explains his true birth place, but it goes into some of the folk legends of Crockett’s life, rather than sticking much to historical facts. This is meant to embrace the legend of Crockett, which in many ways is an example of American self-reliance, authority, and righteousness. Clearly, there are very patriotic themes throughout the song, with lines like “his land is biggest and his land is best.” Thus, the folk song is part of the larger American discourse that increases national pride and respect for American ideology.

 

Source: The Kentucky Headhunters.” The Ballad of Davey Crockett.” 1991.

Television Folklore: Little Red Riding Hood

One of the more recent television series to utilize folk tales as a vehicle for the plotline is the ABC series Once Upon a Time that first aired in 2011. It brings in a variety of fairytale and folktale characters in an interesting story where fantasy characters are somehow transported into the real world and how the interact with normal society. Its main characters are often from more recent fairy tales, such as the ones that the Disney corporation has remade, but there are some more obscure and odd characters of folk tales that do find their way into some episodes.

Another interesting reference I wanted to touch on here was the character of Little Red Riding Hood as she appears in the series. In season 2 episode seven, the show exposes an interesting element of Red Riding Hood that is vastly different from the original folk tale. The original story presents Red Riding Hood as an innocent girl that is hunted by a malicious wolf. Yet, in the episode, Ruby, she has become the wolf. The series has the character actually a shape-shifting werewolf. In the episode, the townspeople find her in wolf form hiding from their wrath. She is almost killed for killing a man before she is saved by other townspeople and it is revealed that one of the town’s leaders killed the man and framed Ruby to try to make it look like a wolf.

Overall, this episode is interesting because it makes the character of the folk tale into the very creature that hunted her. It may be a signal that the wolf did eventually get Little Red Riding Hood at the end of the tale, even though he does not in most versions. It is an interesting interjection that combines innocence with power, making Red Riding Hood a more distinctive character than simply a little, innocent girl without any more depth to her character.

Source: “Child of the Moon.” Once Upon A Time. ABC. 2011.

 

Animal Folklore: The Cat Who Walks Alone

For this collection, I wanted to also add in some of my own favorite folktales that were read to me as a child. The first is a story written by Rudyard Kipling in his Just So Stories, a collection of folktales meant to be read aloud by parents to their children. My favorite of these stories, “The Cat That Walked by Himself” is a folktale describing the reason cats have never been truly domesticated like other animals, including dogs and horses. The story opens describing the early age of man, before humanity had domesticated animals. It then describes the process of domesticating animals like the dog, cow, and horse. The man’s wife tried to domesticate the cat, but the cat refused, claiming “I am not a friend, and I am not a servant. I am the cat who walks by himself.” He wants the benefits of free food and shelter but refuses to live under the domination of the woman and the man. Instead, he attacks their young child and is driven out by the man and the other animals, who vow to hate him and chase him always. It is meant to explain the solitary nature of cats and how they often do not get along with other animals or their human masters.

As the author of major children’s stories like The Jungle Book, Kipling has a very animated style of writing that really is expressed when read aloud. He starts the story with “hear and attend and listen; for this befell and behappened and became and was, O best beloved.” The phrases were very nostalgic. In fact, my mother had adopted that as my childhood nickname—Best Beloved. I had my mother read a part of the story to me over the phone and it felt like I was transported back into my childhood. Although I could not see her facial expressions or hand gestures, she had read the story to me so many times I could still picture them vividly in my head. Moreover, her enunciations of the words were spot on with my memory, which helped me better with the visualization of the performance she was expressing on the other end of the phone line.