Author Archives: rscharen@usc.edu

The New Priest

Informant: So.. I have a joke about a priest if you want to hear it.

Interviewer: That sounds great.

Informant: So there’s a new priest that is taking over a church after another priest that is retiring. The old priest is teaching him about how he runs the church. “The most important part” he says “is the confessional. For small sins, I give one Lord’s prayer, for larger sins, I give two, and for really big ones I give three. If you have any questions, ask the warden, he’s been working here with me for a really long time so he knows almost everything.” So, one day, long after the old priest has left, the new priest has a woman in his confessional, who says “I had oral sex.” The new priest isn’t sure how bad this sin is, so he goes and asks the warden: “What did the old priest give for oral sex?” The warden replies “I’m not sure about other people, but to me he gave a fidorka (traditional Czech snack).”

Context: My informant is a nineteen year old Czech national attending school in the United States. He’s lived in Prague for most of his life, and Czech is his first language. The interview was conducted face-to-face in a college dorm room.

Background: My informant heard this joke from one of his friends. According to him, the Czech populace tends to be agnostic or atheistic, so jokes making fun of religion or religious figures are not uncommon. However,  these jokes are not mean spirited, but rather are used to criticize an institution which was normally difficult to criticize for much of Czech history.

Analysis: This joke is evidently poking fun at the church, but when one delves slightly deeper into its wording, there is a greater underlying significance. The joke references the older priest, supposedly a veteran cleric of the church, who, despite being a seasoned clergyman, still needs sexual satisfaction. The price of that satisfaction aside, it outlines an element of the Catholic church in particular – that is, the supposed abstinence of clergymen – and suggests that, perhaps, the clergy are not so pure after all. Here, we see the role of folklore in questioning larger institutions, their inner-workings, and their greater cultural roles.

The Origin of the Řízek

Interviewer: So you just gave me a recipe for… I’m not going to try and pronounce it. You said you also have a story about its origin?

Informant: Yeah, during some battle of the Austrian-Hungarian army in Italy, the general that led his battalion there from the army saw the locals making some sort of food where they would take a piece of meat and cover it in parmesan and fry it. He thought, “well how could I recreate this for our emperor when we don’t have parmesan back home?” So, when he got back from the war, he had the chef at the royal palace recreate the recipe and that’s how this recipe came about

Interviewer: I assume the general was Czech?

Informant: Yeah, yeah.

Context: My informant is a nineteen year old Czech national attending school in the United States. He’s lived in Prague for most of his life, and Czech is his first language. The interview was conducted face-to-face in a college dorm room.

Background: My informant probably learned this story from his grandmother. He remembers it because Řízek is a traditional food that every Czech person knows how to make. He places great importance on this story because it disputes the Austrian and Hungarian claims to Řízek, a food widely considered by the Czech population as their national dish.

Analysis: I personally find this legend very believable. Řízek the food closely resembles chicken parmesan from Italy, and the story itself is quite believable from a historical sense. The Austro-Hungarian army was in Italy, and a general would conceivably had seen the traditional Italian dish prepared. From a more objective perspective, this story legend is also interesting because, despite being a Czech legend, it refers to a time period before the Czech people had an actual sovereign nation, but is still used to reinforce the claims of the Czech people on Řízek.

Legend of the White Lighter

 

Informant: You know those groups of musicians that die before the age of 24?

Interviewer: Sure

Informant: I think there’s like one person who died with like the story of using a white lighter so there’s always that curse… you know, don’t use that white lighter. It’s cursed. Something bad is going to happen, it’s bad luck. Literally, like, smoking with my friends, one of them, we were smoking at his house – he thought his parents weren’t going to be there for a while. We were like “oh man, only lighter we have is this white lighter, let’s use that” We use it and his parents come back wayy earlier than expected and were like “oh we left something here” and saw us in the middle of our smoke session outside.

Interviewer: Any others?

Informant: One of my friends was looking in his car for a lighter and the only one in his car was a white one in the glovebox or whatever. I guess this house or parking lot he was at called the cops and they came up and arrested him. Pretty sure he ended up with a possession charge.

Interviewer: Oh wow…

Informant: Yeah man stay away from those white lighters.

Context: My informant is a twenty one year old from a midwestern town bordering a legal marijuana state and an illegal marijuana state. This story was told while sitting around a table in a college dorm common room – my informant sat across from me and told me his story in person.

Background: My informant knows this story because it’s been passed between nearly everyone he knows who smokes – white lighters are never good luck. To him, it simply means to never use a white lighter – he admitted after our interview that he still makes a point of avoiding white lighters.

Analysis: The Story of the White Lighter is a classic example of an urban legend. Though my informant cannot necessarily verify its authenticity, his story nonetheless takes place in recent history. Interestingly, we can see here the actual evolution of the story. Not only does the interviewee sum up the general origin of the story and the gist of it, he also adds his own experience to it – one in which he himself was also cursed by the white lighter, thus adding further legitimacy to the story. Anyone who has a bad experience with a white lighter can add their own run-in with its curse to the story relatively easily, thus allowing the legend to more easily spread.

The Hantus in the Banyan Trees

Informant: There’s these things in Singapore, they’re called Hantus, they’re basically ghosts. So because Singapore was part of Malaysia at some point, a lot of our culture has to do with Malaysian culture. There’s this story about Hantus where, around Singapore, there’s a lot of these trees called Banyan Trees. These trees have huge stems, and are super wide. There are a ton of roots that hang from their canopies down.

Because of these roots, Banyan trees are very dark, especially at night. Their canopies are thick, so light can’t get through them, and the stems obscure everything else.

There’s this legend that when you go into the forest at night and you see all of these Banyan trees, you’re not supposed to shine light up into them, or like, if you have a flash, you’re not supposed to shine it into the top of the trees, and you can’t touch the hanging roots either. If you do, these ghost things, these Bantus, jump out of the trees and will “get” you.

Context: This informant is a nineteen year old college student, attending school in the US, but originally from Singapore. This legend was told to me by the informant in a college dorm room.

Background: The informant heard this belief from some of his friends, who also claimed to have seen the eyes of Hantus in the canopies of the Banyan trees. The informant doesn’t believe in this superstition, but he did mention that several people had gone missing among the Banyan trees around Singapore. To him, it’s simply a way to scare people and keep them from flashing lights around at the trees in the dark.

Analysis: I personally am not sure there are any supernatural forces at work. Like my informant said, this instead sounds like a common superstition, a classic superstition to make the native Banyan trees more mysterious, and also to dissuade people from harming them, in fear of such Hantus. What caught my attention was that this legend seems to be centered very specifically around Singapore, where Banyan trees are especially numerous, but it still heavily draws on elements of Malaysian superstition – Hantus. In this way, the use of both is a great symbolic representation of the shared cultural heritage between Singapore and Malaysia.

Jinxing

Interviewer: Got any Czech traditions or beliefs you could tell me about?

Informant: Sure, yeah there are some cool ones. So, we have one called “Jinxing”. Basically, when somebody predicts something positive about the future, anyone in the room should knock on an object made out of wood, in order for it to come true.

There’s also another variation for it. Same sort of.. Requirements for the tradition, but instead of knocking on something wood, you have to find something hollow and knock on it

Interviewer: Does anything happen if you don’t knock on an object?

Informant: If you don’t knock on an object, then that prediction won’t happen. Like, the exact opposite, worst case scenario would occur.

Context: My informant is a nineteen year old Czech national attending school in the United States. He’s lived in Prague for most of his life, and Czech is his first language. The interview was conducted face-to-face in a college dorm room.

Background: My informant, though he claims himself not to be superstitious, did profess that he did knock, since to do otherwise would be to “jinx” the prediction. He learned of the belief from his friends while living in Prague, and said that though he did not necessarily share this belief entirely, he was still afraid of “Jinxing” a prediction. According to him, if anyone were to not knock on an object, they would be accused if anything went wrong in the future.

Analysis: This belief is reminiscent of a similar belief held in the Northwestern United States that I’ve encountered, though I’m unsure how widespread of a phenomenon it is. In the US, “Jinxing” simply means that if you second-guess someone or say your misgivings about an action or event out loud, whatever you worried about will actually come true. This seems to be tied to some overarching belief in fate, especially as a malicious, or at least unforgiving force. Though this understanding of faith seems to be malleable, it can be constrained – in this case, when one does not voice their concerns, the belief is that fate will turn a blind eye. The fact that this understanding of fate is present in both the US and Czech may suggest a sharing of cultural attributes, perhaps through channels of immigration.