Author Archives: bhumbla

The Origin of the Lockhart Family Name.

Main Piece:

Informant: Um, so my last name is Lockhart, and despite being, I don’t know, maybe at best a quarter Scottish, it’s the part of my family that I know the most about just because… you know, having a name attached to you, makes it pretty easy. My grandfather, my Lockhart grandfather is really into genealogy. So he’s like traced all this shit and most of it actually comes from him so most of this is, like, from him. I have no idea how true any of it is.

So I think the Lockhart name… It’s a Scottish clan and each clan literally is like what you think the clan like there’s a little area and all the little Lockharts live there. So then here’s where the name comes from. So, it used to be like Loekard or like Locard. But then, etymologically, it actually got changed to “lock” and “heart,” like the two English words. Because it actually refers to a lock and the heart. Because, and this is the legend my grandfather told me. 

So King Robert the Bruce of Scotland went on the Crusades. Okay and I’m pretty sure he died on the Crusades. So Robert the Bruce goes on a big crusade, and he dies. And I think he gets – his heart gets carried back to Scotland, so that he can get buried.

Interviewer: Is that like a Scottish thing that you only need the heart? Like that’s the important thing to bury, the –

Informant: Um, I don’t think there’s anything particularly Scottish about that. I think he was just like, you know, your king’s dead. You want to take them home. 

So then they literally just put his heart in a little, metal cage and carried it back. And I literally think it started as a pun. Because there was like some Lockhart who was carrying the cage and the other soldiers must have been “Lochard? Lock … Heart? Lockhart! That’s you. That’s literally your name now.”

Interviewer: So, coincidentally the person who is carrying the heart in the cage had a name that sounded like –

Informant: He was the primordial Lockhart, he was. Yeah. So Lockhart is the English version. And that’s when the family’s name changed. I guess it’s kind of a hit. When you’re carrying the king’s heart. So that’s how the Lockhart name got started.

Background:

My informant is a friend of mine from high school who now goes to University of Chicago. He’s Scottish-Irish and his family on his dad’s side has been in America for hundreds of years. He knows this piece because his grandfather on his father’s side had told him. He doesn’t know where his grandfather got it from. He thinks of it as a very interesting story about how his name came about.

Context:

The informant is an old high school friend of mine. We’re both home due to online classes and we frequently call each other. During one of our calls over Zoom, I asked if he had any samples of folklore that I can collect and he shared a few.

Analysis:

The story is a very interesting one, and definitely rooted in history. A quick Google search reveals that Robert the Bruce lived in the 13th and 14th centuries, dying in 1329. He is revered in Scotland as a national hero as he won the First War of Scottish Independence against England (the war covered in Braveheart). 

Interestingly, Robert did not die on a Crusade. While he had vowed to go on a Crusade, he never actually did and he died of unknown, but nonviolent, causes. Even more interestingly, Robert asked that his heart be buried in Jerusalem and a company of knights (including Sir Simon Locard) set out to make it so. Perhaps this is where the idea of the story taking place on a Crusade came from. The company went to Spain and fought Granada. However, most of the knights were wiped out and a few, including Simon Locard, returned back to Scotland. 

To see another retelling of these events, read the novel The Talisman, written by Sir Walter Scott in 1825 and directly inspired by these events.

Scott, Walter. The Talisman. Harper & Bros. Publishers, 1902.

New Years Tradition: Throwing out the Water

Main Body: 

Informant: I don’t think my family did this all that much. Maybe they did, I’m not sure. But I know for sure other families did this where … sometimes they would open the door and throw a big bucket of water out.

Interviewer: Just throw a bucket of water out? Did have to be hot or cold or anything like that?

Informant: No, I – the temperature didn’t really matter.

Interviewer: Oh, so why do that?

Informant: I think it’s supposed to be getting rid of any bad luck for the next year. Like the water symbolizes all the old, bad luck and you’re just getting rid of it and getting a fresh start.

Background:

My informant is a friend and a fellow student at USC. She was born and raised in Florida but her father comes from Nicaragua and her mother comes from the Appalachian region. This tradition is something she got from her father and is something her entire family does regularly. She is under the impression that this is a common tradition that many families from Latin American countries participate in but she is unsure as to which countries specifically do or don’t participate in it. She thinks of it as another fun, special New Years’ tradition.

Context:

I had set up a Zoom call with my friend because she said she had some examples of folklore that she could share with me. This sample was shared during that call

Analysis:

This seems like a fairly straightforward tradition to me. Water usually doesn’t symbolize negative things, but I imagine there would be substantially more clean up involved with anything else. Additionally you could say there is significance in throwing the water out directly from one’s doorstep. The door is a threshold, it represents the line between what is in your home and what is not. By taking the water from inside your home, cross the threshold, to outside you are effectively making clear that the water (or bad luck) is no longer welcome in your home, in your life. There could be aspects of this that are tied to Latin American culture, or Nicaraguan culture specifically, but I’m not well versed enough to comment on them.

Malewal of the Thieves

Main Body:

Informant: So the village we come from? It’s called Malewal. Our ancestors, seven generations up from my dad, so nine generations up from you, there was Chandu, he was the first of two people who came and settled in our village. He shared our last name, he was our ancestor. So those two started the village and this is a story about Chandu.

So at some point in the past there was more than one Malewal in that area, so people would ask, “Which Malewal are you from?” And the Malewal we came from was known as “Malewal of the Thieves.” The story we heard, and I heard this multiple times is, well, Chandu was a farmer. Living hand to mouth most of the time. But Chandu, he also … at times … well he liked being a thief. 

And again, I don’t know the full story. But there was one time where – there was a town called Anandpur Sahib where Sikhism as a martial religion, the last guru, that’s where it started. Straight line, from Malewal, it’s around ten kilometers. There were a lot of Sodhis there, Sodhi is a last name, that was the family. It was a Sikh name. Apparently they were the descendants of some of the ten gurus. They were more affluent. And Chandu, for whatever reason, had enmity with them. So one night Chandu’s father-in-law is visiting, and it’s night and they go to sleep and their beds are right next to each other. So at night, he walks all the way to Anandpur Sahib. He steals a horse, he was a horse-thief. He comes back to our village but goes even further and drops it off at a friend’s house at another village.

The Sodhis come to Malewal in the morning, following footprints or whatever. They suspect it was Chandu. They accuse him but his father-in-law vouches for him saying that Chandu was next to him when he fell asleep and when he woke up, Chandu was still next to him. So the Sodhis had no proof. So that’s the story. And that’s why we’re from Malewal of the Thieves. Chandu was definitely a real person but I have no idea how real this story is. 

Background:

The informant is my father who was born and raised in northern India in the state of Punjab and immigrated to America over 20 years ago. He was raised for a time in a rural village setting which is where much of our family comes from. The village he came from, Malewal, is the center of this story. The story was well known not just within his village but within the surrounding villages as well. It was how people identified where it was he was from. 

Context:

I am back home due to shelter-in-place. One night when my family was sitting in the study I asked my father if he had any folklore samples I could add to the archive. This was one of the ones he shared with me.

Analysis:

I had never heard this story before and it was entertaining to hear somewhat of an origin story for my family. I could find no record of this story or of Malewal being referred to as “Malewal of the Thieves” anywhere online. However this story is very credible. We know Chandu to have existed and stealing a horse is a very doable action. While the story itself does not have much to analyze I think it’s interesting in how it shows how a village gets its name. How one story leads to a label surviving nine generations. Even now, when the other Malewal apparently has ceased to exist, my father says that locals still know Malewal as “Malewal of the Thieves.” While the validity of the story itself is unsure, its impact on how the village has been named and perceived is all too real.

The Wedding Beat

Main Body:

Informant: This is one that I’m positive does not happen in my part of India, in my part of the community. I had not witnessed it until my brother got married. He was getting married and my sister-in-law was from Haryana (a northern state of India). And the wedding was in Chandigarh which is a big city. So this was after the wedding ceremony but we’re still all sitting around. My brother, the groom, gets called into a room. And he walked in, and there were always these little rituals to do so I suppose he thought it had something to do with that. And I walked in after him but someone stopped me. So my brother comes back out two or five minutes later, red in the face, and he told me that they all punched him on the back.

I mean, it wasn’t soft too, it was pretty serious. I thought it was funny. It was the bride’s family that did it and they laid into him pretty good. So they brought him in there under false pretenses and there were all these women –

Interviewer: So it was exclusively the women in the bride’s family?

Informant: Yeah, only women, not men. So it’s more of women in the bride’s family messing with the groom’s family. Here’s my theory, there were many women in there who probably were abused and this was their way of getting some of their thing out. And at my wedding, and your mom is from UP which is a different state. At a similar point in the wedding, and my brother in law was standing behind me. And some women from your mom’s family came and they hit my brother-in-law, my sister’s husband. But it wasn’t like a fist, like how they hit my brother, it was open hand. It was on the back and they had some powder some turmeric on their hand so now they have a hand print on their nice suit. Funny thing, my brother-in-law starts yelling, “No you don’t hit the brother-in-law, you’re supposed to hit the groom!” Which is why, even though I haven’t heard of it anywhere else, I’m pretty sure this is a tradition in some sense.

Background:

The informant is my father who was born and raised in northern India in the state of Punjab and immigrated to America over 20 years ago. He was raised for a time in a rural village setting which is where much of our family comes from and this tradition is one he noticed being practiced in those rural, village weddings. This also happened at his own wedding.

Context:

I am back home due to shelter-in-place. One night when my family was sitting in the study I asked my father if he had any folklore samples I could add to the archive. This was one of the ones he shared with me.

Analysis:

I think this tradition comes from the women in the bride’s family fighting back at the patriarchal society they find themselves in. While done in jest, it could be argued that the women beating the groom is a warning for him not to do the same to the bride and to treat her right, otherwise he knows what’s awaiting him. Additionally, the example of a powdered handprint being left on a suit could suggest that the women are leaving their “mark,” much as a man would leave on a woman by beating her. They’re leaving a physical and a visual reminder that there is an entire family who is looking after the bride so she is to be treated well.The fact that the two examples discussed happened in different, yet nearby states, lends credence to this being a widespread tradition in northern India.

The Wedding Singers

Main Body:

Informant: So singing at weddings was big. And I’ll describe this from my memory because I haven’t seen it anywhere else. But I remember, you’d be on the groom’s side. So everyone is sitting on the floor. Typically this would be in the courtyard of … some kind of thing like if there are a few houses it would be in the courtyard in the middle. But then, houses were usually one story high. And on the roof of the house, there would be all these girls sitting all around, on the edge of the roof. They’d be sitting in a row and they’d be singing. So whenever a particular part of the wedding ritual took place, they’d be singing a song that was relevant or appropriate. What they’d also do is, typically, they’d be picking on the groom’s family. 

Interviewer: So these are all women from the bride’s family?

Informant: Yup. And I don’t think there was any restriction on whether or not they could be married or unmarried or anything. While the ceremony is going on, they don’t wait for pauses or anything, they are just continually singing over the ceremony. And they weren’t faint or anything. I mean, they weren’t overpowering but you could very clearly hear them. 

And this is the funny part, I remember one time I was looking up. And their songs, you know, sometimes they would have pathos in them because it was a sad thing because, typically, the bride would not return home after being married off. So they would, the singers would pick on the groom’s family. Like “Oh look at his mustache” or “Oh he’s bald,” or something like that. So I looked up, I was a little kid, to see what all the singing was about. And I remember my older brother telling me, very sternly, “You’re not supposed to look up.” So you can’t acknowledge them. But at the same time, it was very clear that people would feel deprived if there wasn’t that singing.

Background:

The informant is my father who was born and raised in northern India in the state of Punjab and immigrated to America over 20 years ago. He was raised for a time in a rural village setting which is where much of our family comes from and this tradition is one he noticed being practiced in those rural, village weddings. This did not happen in his own wedding.

Context:

I am back home due to shelter-in-place. One night when my family was sitting in the study I asked my father if he had any folklore samples I could add to the archive. This was one of the ones he shared with me.

Analysis:

I think I understand where this tradition comes from. India is, by and large, an incredibly patriarchal society. Brides are married off, largely expected to stay home. Even now I see it during dinner settings there is an unspoken expectation that the women clean and bring the food to the table while the men sit and wait. So with the wedding being a somewhat sad affair for the bride’s family, losing their sister/daughter/niece to another family, this tradition is sort of a way of rebelling against that. Disrupting the ceremony, making fun of the groom’s family, ultimately all in vain as the bride will be married and leave. But it’s the bride’s family’s way of expressing their love for the bride and acting out to show, in a roundabout way, that they will miss her.