Author Archives: Maisie Klompus

The Legend of Schloss Rannariedl in Austria

The informant shares the legend of Rannariedl Castle in Upper Austria:

Rannariedl

My informant, a native Austrian couch surfing across North America, said that he knew this story because he learned it in school, but that he remembered particularly because the castle, or at least the remains of the castle are 20 km (~12.5 miles) away from the house that he grew up in.

The legend is one of stolen property, which, after many hardships, is serendipitously returned to the rightful owner who had always been a good man. Many different folklore tropes come into play here: the idea of good karma and what goes around comes around plays a large role in the story, as does the idea that eventually, everything will find its rightful place.

Seeing as the story was taught in his history class, there is a large base of belief surrounding the happenings of the story itself, even if it was hard for me to find similar, and as detailed evidence of the truth-value of the story, particularly when the infant boy is sent down the river in a walnut shell. However, it could be possible that there was something lost in translation in the informant’s performance of the piece, seeing as English is not his native tongue, even though he speaks it very well.

This legend can also be found here (text in German, legend is number ‘*104’): http://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/oesterreich/oberoesterreich/allgemein/schatzheben.html

Chantry Flats, Santa Anita Canyon

In my high school there’s this place called Chantry flats where everyone cliff jumps, and it’s like a ritual now. It’s a really popular spot up in the wilderness, up in the mountains above Pasadena in arcadia. And you hike through this beautiful ravine filled with forest for like a mile and a half, and you get to this beautiful rocky place with a natural waterfall, and you cliff jump. There’s an intermediate jump, which is about two stories high, and then there’s a high jump that’s about 4.5 to 5 stories high. That one I still haven’t done yet, but the next time I cliff jump, I told myself I would. The first time I did it was a couple of years ago, people in my High School do it a lot, it’s like a rite of passage, in that everyone does at some point in their High School career.

This is a good example of a legend quest in a liminal phase in life: High School is a time of constant change and creation of your identity, and cliff-jumping at Chantry Flats has become a sort of unofficial initiation into this group. It’s dangerous, not for the faint of heart, and is a rite of passage to be accepted/brought into the fold by your peers in High School.  Not only is going to Chantry Flats a way to challenge death and push yourself in front of others to show your fearlessness, but apparently it’s also really fun, so it becomes a fun pastime as well as a rite of passage. This practice has become part of the high school’s lore, seeing as it is not sanctioned by the school in any way, yet everyone in the school at some point in their High School career cliff jumps at Chantry Flats. It’s also a way to defy authority because cliff jumping is a dangerous thing, and there are no lifeguards there to say what’s safe to do and what’s unsafe.

Gravity Hill, Pasadena

‘There’s this place in Pasadena called Gravity Hill, and it’s this very foresty, old area of Pasadena where there’s a lot of oak knolls. And I never done it myself, but I remember people from my high school would go. You need a car, first of all, and you drive up to the top of the hill, right at the precipice, and they sit there for a while, and I dunno when exactly, but they somehow feel like they’re levitating. It’s like gravity is reversed there, right at that one sweet spot. But I’ve heard it from many different people that they’ve all felt the same way. And they felt like everything was lifting up right now. They stay in the car and they don’t lift up out of the car but the car itself feels like it’s levitating. You go because it’s a myth, and it seems cool, but it’s also spooky in a kind of, you have to find out yourself kind of way. ‘

This piece of folklore is a legend quest of sorts because it’s an event action that you undertake to prove or disprove the theory going around about the weird things that happen on Gravity Hill. This legend quest is also particularly intriguing because it involves the mysteries of the supernatural and the unexplainable, which is always fascinating and also exciting, because it’s unknowable what will happen when you’re there. The remote location is also key in this piece of folklore because it means that the participants have to undertake a sort of journey to get to the special location where magical things await them.

‘Nothing like a fart joke’

“My mom would always say ‘nothing like a fart joke’ when my brother, my dad and I start getting into lewd humor of any kind. It’s sort of saying, you boys are beings boys and you’re being stupid. It’s sort of her thing that she’d say.”

This is the informant’s mother’s way of acknowledging that her family is being crude and uncouth, but, as my informant points out, it is also her way of saying “boys will be boys”, excusing them for lewd behavior while also lightly chastising them.This proverb is particularly important to the informant because his mother passed away some years ago, so it also represents his relationship with his mother, and is a saying that was characteristic of her that he can remember her by.

Straws for Baby Jesus

“For Christmas, my parents would put a little miniature manger on our fireplace mantle, and whenever one of us kids did something nice or selfless, we’d get to put a piece of hay in the manger. And then on xmas morning, little baby jesus would appear in the manger, and our parents would congratulate us on how comfortable we made little baby jesus that year, or scold us on how bare his crib was. But the hay we put in was a lot stiffer than the hay that was already in there. They did it to encourage good behavior.”

My informant said that this was a Christmas tradition in his immediately family when he was growing up, and even though he says he thinks it’s kind of dumb now, I know him well enough to know that he enjoyed it then and still appreciates it now.

Adding straw to the manger of the baby Jesus is an inventive and interactive way for the parents to encourage good behavior in their children in a religious fashion by giving them a prize when they do something good. Having something for the children to look forward to is definitely a big part of this practice, which seemed to have become it’s own kind of alternative/addition to the practice of leaving out milk and cookies for Santa on Christmas night. Like the cookies for Santa, the straws for baby Jesus practice also include an element of surprise and mystery, because on Christmas morning the children discover that baby Jesus has magically appeared in his crib, it’s own little festivus miracle of sorts. This fun piece of folklore is also a way to enforce religion as a good moral compass: do something good, get rewarded through religion.