Author Archives: Antona Yost

Etsa

The informant is a 19 year old Ecuadorian student studying Architecture at the University of Southern California.  Her family is from Quito, Ecuador.  English is her second language, but she wanted to share these folk items with me in English.  Following a direct transcription of how she spoke the tale in English is a copy of how she wrote it out in her native Spanish. 

“This is a Shuar legend, which is an ethnicity in my country, these are like a tribe that lives in the Amazon jungle which is at the right part of Ecuador. The legend is called Etsa, whose name in Shuar means son – the brave son, the generous son of its ancestors.

“The legend starts by, when the Grandpa, Arutam, which in Shuar means the “powerful tiger spirit of the morning”, he walked through the jungle in between giant matapalos, frondosos, copales, chambiras y pitajayas. And he told the children how the luminous Etsa gave back the life to the birds.

“The story starts when Iwia, that was a really horrible demon, had the custom of taking the Shuars and putting them in their enormous Shigra, which is sort of like a handbag that is typical from these people. And he saved them in this Shigra to eat them later.  That’s how the parents of etsa died.  But he [the demon] seeing how powerful this child was, he kidnapped him and he made him believe that he was actually his parent. And so Etsa grew up thinking that the demon was his parent, so he did everything he told him to.

“And he commanded Etsa to hunt birds for him every day, so he would eat them as desert.  And one day, Etsa discovered that the jungle was in silence and there were no more colorful birds anywhere.  There was only one pigeon that was Yamapancam, that was in some branches of a Malitawa.  And they became friends – they started talking and they became friends.  The pigeon told him the truth about his parents and about  the demon

“The boy cried bitterly for hours after this and then the pigeon told him that he could not do anything to give his parents their life back but he could still give the life back to the birds.  And he explained to him that if he put in his cerbatana – which is this elongated sort of thing where they blow –  the Shuars – blow on – that if he put the feathers of the birds that he has killed in the cerbatana and he blows, he will give the life back to the birds.   So he did it immediately and from his long cerbatana thousands and millions of birds of every color started to fly and happily populate again the jungle.  And from then on Etsa and the demon Iwia are mortal enemies.”

Written by informant, in her native Ecuadorian Spanish:

“Etsa – Shuar, su nombre quiere decir sol, el valiente sol, el generoso sol de sus antepasados.

“El abuelo Arútam (Shuar = Poderoso Espíritu Tigre de la mañana) mientras caminaba por la Selva, entre gigantescos metapalos, frondosos, copales chambiras y pitajayas, relataba a los niños como el luminosa Etsa le devolvió la vida a los pájaros.

“Iwia = demonio tenía la costumbre de atrapai a los Shuar y meterlos en su enorme Shigra para después comérselos.  Así murieron los padres de Etsa.  Raptó al niño y le hizo creer que su padre era él

“Todos los días cazaba pájaros para el demonio (se los pedíce de postre)

“Descubrió con asombro que la selva estaba en silencio.  Ya no había pájaros coloridos por ninguna parte. Solo quedaba la paloma Yápankam, posada sobre las ramas de una Malitagua.

“Se hicieron amigos, la paloma le contó la verdad. El muchacho lloró amargamente por horas.  “No puedes hacer nada para devolverle la vida a tus padres pero aún puedes devolvérsela a los pájaros”, La paloma explico. “Introduce en la cerbatana las plumas de los pájaros que has matado, y soplas”

“El muchacho lo hizo de inmediato. Desde su larga cerbatana empezaron a salir miles, millones de pájaros de todos los calores que levantaron el cuelo y con su alegría palaron nuevamente la selva.  Desde entonces Etsa (sol) y el demonio Iwia son enemigos mortales.”

When asked what this story means to her:

“I heard it when I was very little, like I heard it in school when we were learning about the different legends and myths, because we have thousands in my country – we really do from every single region and there are many.  And so we were reading this book that is called “Myths and Legends of Ecuador” and we were reading that and I remember that this was one of my favorite folk tales.  I think I have a really visual imagination so I think that by imagining how the birds went out of his cerbatana and how they gave back life to the birds and gave back the colors and their songs to the jungle, I always imagined that.  And also because I think that birds are something that are really emblematic to our country. We have the biggest variety of birds in the world.”

She says she would definitely tell this story to kids or friends, but really only if they were from Ecuador, because she feels it takes some cultural knowledge to fully appreciate and understand.

 

Analysis:

“The Snake’s Journey”

The informant is a 19 year old Occupational Therapy student at USC.  She was born in Calcutta, as were her parents.  She moved to California when she was young and has lived here ever since.  Her family is originally from Gujarat, an area in Western India, and she suspects that her family stories are from her Gujarati heritage. 

“Lord Mahavir Swami Bhagwan is one of our main gods and he was traveling through the country going from village to village. And the way they travel is they just kind of walk everywhere and they just go from home to home and visit.  And so he was walking through the forest one day and he saw a snake that was badly bruised.  The snake was actually a Sadhu, or a Saint, who in his previous life used to get very angry, and that’s not right, that’s not correct for a saint to be so angry – he used to curse people and used to get upset very easily and so he was reborn, reincarnated as a snake, a lower form of life.

“And so he asked the snake, “Why are you covered in bruises?”.  The snake said, “When the villagers pass by, they always throw rocks at me and hit me.”.

“So Mahavir Swami Bhagwan told him, “Well, humans are very mean so next time, why don’t you just hiss at them to scare them.”  So he gave him this advice and Mahavir Swami Bhagwan continued on his journey.

“So the snake, Chandra Mukher Nag*, tried out his advice and he hissed at the villagers the next few times and so this continued.   And on his journey back, Mahavir Swami Bhagwan passed through the same jungle and he came upon Chandra Mukher Nag – I want to say – and he was extremely bruised and beaten.

“And so he asked him what happened. And the snake said, “Well I hissed at them but then a group of villagers came and they beat me up very badly.

“So what happened was the snake died but he reached Moksha or Enlightenment and he essentially became a god.  And that’s because he didn’t act on his anger and he essentially sacrificed himself.  And so through his good Karma that he accumulated he was able to reach Enlightenment or Moksha.”

*The informant thinks this is the correct name but is not sure

The informant explains the significance of the story for her:

“I think it is just another type of parable.  It just says, don’t get angry, don’t get upset.  Others may hurt you but don’t retaliate because nothing good can come from that.  I think it’s another example of, another idea of that non-violence sort of concept.”

Analysis:

This is, in many ways, a typical story of redemption.  The protagonist was put in his current situation as a snake because of his anger in a previous life.  In this life, he redeems himself by not acting on his anger and not striking back at the villagers and instead hissing at them (using his words instead of violence, in a way).  Although he suffers and dies because of his non-violence, despite, and in fact, because of this, he is rewarded with the highest reward: Moksha.  Because he was willing to sacrifice himself instead of being violent, he cancelled out the bad Karma he accumulated in his past life and reached the highest state of being.

This parable teaches a few lessons: 1. Humans can be spiteful and mean and the world will often hurt you for no reason.  Mahavir Swami Bhagwan himself says, “humans are very mean”.  2. Use your words (hiss), instead of your anger and violence when faced with these struggles, even if it hurts you in the end.  3.  Personal suffering and even death is better than causing others pain.  4. We can learn things from animals as they could have once been humans.  Follow the snake’s example and hiss (speak) instead of biting (getting angry).

 

“Sadhu and the Shaak” – version 2

The informant is a 19 year old Occupational Therapy student at USC.  She was born in Calcutta, as were her parents.  She moved to California when she was young and has lived here ever since.  Her family is originally from Gujarat, an area in Western India, and she suspects that her family stories are from her Gujarati heritage. 

This version is the on my informant shared right after talking to her mother and listening again to the story from her childhood.  The version she told me, just from her memory, the day before can be found here: http://folklore.usc.edu/?p=30209

“One of the Sadhus, or Saints, was travelling, and the Saints never use cars they never have any personal belongings, they only take as much food from the homes as they need to sustain themselves, they never take more.  So it’s a very simple lifestyle they lead.

“The Saint was travelling through the villages and he came upon this home and this lady invited him over to eat food. And so she had cooked this bitter gourd curry. And generally bitter gourd, if it’s not cooked or it’s too bitter, it can be poisonous and it can kill people. But she hadn’t tasted it before she served it to him, and generally you’re not supposed to taste foor but certain vegetables you sh- before you give it to a saint, but you should taste certain vegetables like this to make sure.

“Anyway, so he took one bite and he realized it’s inedible. But when he was eating, a drop had fallen on the ground and the ants had swarmed on it and the ants that ate it died.

“And so he realized he had a choice: he could either consume it and die himself or he could throw it away and whatever animals and living things would crawl on it , they would die in his place.

“And a core principle of Jainism is non-violence or Ahimsa, and so he committed self-sacrifice and he ate this curry or shaak and killed himself in order save the lives of the innocent insects as such.  And that allowed him to reach Moksha enlightenment as well because he gained that positive Karma.”

 

Intense life-guard instructor

Informant is a 21 year old student at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.  He studies musical composition and business. His family tells a lot of stories, many of which he enjoys sharing with his friends at applicable times.

“An amusing story that comes to mind is one that my Dad tells of when he was training to be a life guard.  This has particular resonance for me because I was a life guard myself.  But he tells this story of this sort of  ex-Marine or maybe Navy Seal guy who was six foot seven – you know, he gets taller every time the story’s told – you know three hundred pounds of all muscle who was their instructor and would teach him, would teach all the students all of the things that lifeguard don’t really actually have to know but that are kind of fun – like pressure points and how to you know knock people unconscious if necessary.  And the culminating, you know final exam for this class was supposedly that this guy would just jump in the water and go down to the bottom of the pool and you had to go down there and he would try his hardest to drown you.  You had to find a way to bring him back up to the surface which, is, I think a little bit embellished, or at least it was a different era.  Of course the question I always had was, why not just wait until he had to come up for air and say you won, haha.  But, who knows!”

 

The informant says that, while he would mainly share this story with other family members, he would, and has, shared it with friends and fellow life-guard coworkers.

Analysis:

This story, while a family specific story, has a couple elements that are found in many stories.  One of these is the element of a large, scary, and vaguely militaristic character.  This character, the life-guard instructor in this story, acts as both a teacher and an obstacle that must be overcome at the end of one’s training in an almost-impossible way.  This character is found often in American pop-culture and folklore.  Another element of this story is the trope about how the old-days, or the way things used to be done were better in some way.   In this case, it is that life-guard training was more intense and that the informant’s father had to work harder to get certified as a life-guard than the informant did.

It has legend-like elements because of these stock characters, situations and themes and because it could be true but as the informant said, “who knows”!

Marking chickens

Informant is a 21 year old student at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.  He studies musical composition and business. His family tells a lot of stories, many of which he enjoys sharing with his friends at applicable times.  Here is one such story and a family custom that arose from this story.

 

“An amusing story from my family is that we have an uncle named Mark, except he is from Boston, so he’s really named “Maahk” – I can’t quite do the accent.  But this uncle is married to my father’s sister yet he’s very very dearly beloved by my mother’s mother – so my maternal grandmother and my paternal uncle.  They are both fantastic cooks, which is one thing they share in common.

“And so he, there was some family gathering wherein he was grilling chicken and he was taking it out to the grill to mark it, you know which is when you sear the sides to kind of seal in the flavor, but because of his Boston accent he pronounced it “maahk”, he was “maahking”* the chicken.

“So my dear little maternal Polish grandmother who is I believe over 5 feet, even five foot one and three quarters if you are being particular, but you know, this tiny lady and this huge Italian Boston guy have this hot exchange where where she is confused and perhaps a little bit scandalized that he’s taking the chickens out back to make fun of them.  So this has been passed down as a family legend that the chickens need to be insulted before they can be properly cooked.”

*the way he pronounced it sounded closer to “mocking” than to “marking”, thus the joke

 

Analysis: