Monthly Archives: May 2011

Persian Pregnancy Magic Superstition

Nationality: Persian
Age: 23
Occupation: Artist
Residence: Eagle Rock, CA
Performance Date: 1995
Primary Language: English
Language: farsi

??? ??????

maah-gereftegi

Eclipse

Roxana recalls a folk magic superstition from her Persian culture that she learned from her mother at about seven years of age while growing up in Orange County, California. The context in which this magic superstition is relevant, is with a woman who is carrying a child.

Roxana recalls, “My Mom said, ‘When I was younger, I heard that if you touch your pregnant belly on a full moon, your child will have a birth mark wherever you touched your belly. So, when I was pregnant with you,’ she told me, ‘I touched my belly on the full moon.’ And then, when I was born, I had a huge birthmark on my stomach. We tried to remove it because they said it might be cancerous, so now it’s a six-inch scar.”

Roxana feels like she has no choice but to believe this superstition, especially since it seems to have happened to her. She says, “If I’m ever pregnant, I want to keep my hands away from my belly. What if my child comes out with a huge birthmark on his face? I’m like, ‘hand off’ on that day.”

Upon further investigation, I found that the superstition usually applies to pregnant women going outside during an Eclipse, not a full moon (which makes more sense, since Eclipses are much more rare).  However, Roxana seemed pretty sure her mother had said a full moon, so I’m not sure if she made a mistake or simply was taught a different version of the same superstition.

Another superstition involving pregnancy, but with Mexican-Americans, warns that if a pregnant woman walks outside during a full moon the baby will be born with a harelip, or with the features of a wolf. To prevent this from happening, these women are encouraged to tie a bunch of keys around her waist so the keys deflect the moonlight. While this isn’t the exact Persian superstition, it provides variety to a very similar superstition, making this cautionary performance unarguably folklore.

Persian Protection Superstition

Nationality: Persian
Age: 22
Occupation: ARTIST
Residence: Eagle Rock, CA
Performance Date: 1992
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Roxana remembers a Persian tradition her family has held since before she was born in Orange County, California. She first remembers performing this folklore when she was about four years old, as taught tao her by her mother.

Roxana recalls, “If I’m going on a long trip, while I’m walking out the door, my Mom will make me walk under the Koran. It’s so my voyage is blessed. The ironic thing is we’d be going somewhere like… Vegas. The most sinful place in the world. But I’d have to walk under the Koran. It doesn’t make sense [laughs].”

When asked what she thinks about this piece of folklore, Roxana replied, “It’s ironic because we don’t practice anything else that’s Islamic. And we’re always going to places like Vegas to gamble, and drink, and there’s prostitution exposed to me at a young age, but yet we have to walk under the Koran to get there. It’s something that was engrained in [my mother] as a child so she can’t stop doing it. But then I have to be exposed to it because of that, and I don’t really care for it.”

I, on the other hand, have a different opinion of this folklore performance. I believe the action of walking under a holy object, like the Koran, for safety and wellbeing on a journey is a comforting act, one that shows how much your family loves you and hopes that good things will fall upon you while you’re away from home. I don’t think that it should matter if you’re going somewhere a bit “sinful,” like Las Vegas. It’s the sentiment of hoping your loved ones are safe and happy that would matter to me, not so much whether or not I was specifically following the Koran’s teachings.

Proverb

Nationality: Italian (Sicilian)-American
Age: 74
Occupation: Medical Doctor
Residence: Mount Kisco, NY
Performance Date: April 22, 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian; Sicilian dialect

“He who knows and knows he knows, and he who knows not and knows he knows not, has knowledge; but he who knows and knows not he knows, and he who knows not and knows not he knows not, is a fool.”

The above proverb was learned by the informant from a school teacher in his first year of minor Seminary (i.e. equivalent to high school), who likely repeated it several times in reference to learning. The informant states that the proverb could be used “whenever you think any of the four parts is true” but that it is most often used “when you think the last part is true.” It could be said to the person you think it relates to (as in somebody who thinks they truly know something when they really don’t), or to someone else. The informant considers this proverb “useful because it points out to everyone that they should be aware of what they are doing.” Furthermore, it “applies to every aspect of life; no matter what you are doing, you should have knowledge about what you’re doing and knowledge of that knowledge itself, whether you are buying something, selling something, using something, or whatever.”

This proverb seems to be a shorter variation of the following Arabic proverb:

“He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him. He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is a child. Teach him. He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him. He who knows, and knows that he knows, is a leader.”

The message of the version given by the informant seems, in general, to align well with that of the more often cited version, though the latter clearly makes a more specific statement about each of the four kinds of person and their respective degrees of knowledge and, more importantly, of self-knowledge (or knowledge about their knowledge). The theme of determining the extent of one’s own wisdom or ignorance is a prevalent theme in Western thought, contained everywhere from the famous maxim “Know thyself,” to Socrates’ apparent belief that the oracle at Delphi proclaimed him the wisest man in the world precisely because he claimed to know nothing (hence, like the second type in both versions of the proverb, but more so the informant’s). I agree with the informant that the last section of his version of the proverb is the one that we would most likely have in mind when using this saying, but I believe in general the proverb sets-up a slippery slope; for if one must appeal to a sort of meta-knowledge in order to evaluate his more immediate knowledge, it follows from the same logic that he should continue on so that he not only had “knowledge of his knowledge” but even knowledge of this higher order knowledge and so forth ad infinitum making the notion of an ultimate form of self- knowledge, and perhaps knowledge itself, impossible.

Annotation:

Walsh, William Shepard. Handy-book of Literary Curiosities. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1893. 593. Web http://books.google.com/books?id=1zo4AAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=handy-book+of+literary&hl=en&ei=tUy6Tb0ok-SxA_Gd0NkN&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CFQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Ghost Legend of Mae Nak- Thailand (Buddhist)

Nationality: Thai
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bangkok, Thailand
Performance Date: April 22, 2011
Primary Language: Thai (laotian)
Language: English

Legend:

About 100 or 150 years ago, there was a married couple in Bangkok. While the husband was gone on military service the wife, Mae Nak (??????), delivered their first-born baby, but because medicine wasn’t as good at that time, she and the baby died during delivery. When the husband came back, nobody in the village told him that Mae Nak and his baby died because they thought that he would be sad since he was expecting to see his wife and baby, who he hadn’t seen in a long time, when he came home. However, he comes to his house and finds Mae Nak and their baby. Everyone in the village saw that the man had gone home and yet was still acting normal, and talking about Mae Nak and his baby as though they were still alive. These people wonder what is going on and talk among themselves but do not say anything directly to him about the death of his wife and child.  Though someone in the village finally comes and tells him that his wife and child are dead, he doesn’t believe them because he sees them still alive.

One day, Mae Nak is cooking a meal in which lime is one of the ingredients, and the lime falls between the cracks in the floor of the house. The husband sees the lime fall and he goes downstairs to pick up the lime. His wife doesn’t know that he is going to get the lime and, because she is a ghost, she extends her arm all the way through the crack of the floor to the ground under the house to pick up the lime. The husband sees this and now he also recognizes that the house appears differently—all of a sudden, he realizes that his house is also very dirty because his wife is dead (he originally thought that it looked very clean). He finally believes what the village people told him about his family being dead. The husband runs away and goes to a village temple, asking a monk to help him.

At the same time, Mae Nak doesn’t know that her husband saw her ghostly arm extend to pick up the lime and so she doesn’t know why her husband left or where he is and goes searching for him. After looking for a long time, she finally finds him at the village temple. When she gets to the temple a group of monks holds a rope together in a circle with the husband in the middle and pray at the same time (a Thai practice believed to protect the person in the middle from spirits) in order to protect him. One of the monks explains to Mae Nak that she is a ghost and that she must go to the ghost world to be reincarnated, but Mae Nak tells the monk that she really loves her husband and wants to stay with him. The head monk then explains that her husband is not hers forever, and that she cannot fight with nature; she must be reincarnated and cannot stay like she is. However, Mae Nak breaks through the circle of monks and the husband runs away from her. She keeps following her husband, and is very sad and angry that her husband doesn’t want to be with her anymore. He explains to her that a man and a ghost cannot live together, but she still doesn’t understand why and they keep arguing.

Finally, a famous head monk (equiv. to a Christian bishop in Christianity, according to the informant), named Somdej Toh (????????) comes to Mae Nak and explains to her the Buddhist concept of non-attachment, teaching her that from birth, nothing is yours—your body, your property, anything—and that being with this man or not being with this man is no different because she is just a part of nature; no matter what happens, everything is the same. Because this monk is such a great teacher Mae Nak understands now and leaves her husband and goes to the ghost world. Still, to this day, when people go to the district in Bangkok, called Prakanong (???????), where Mae Nak and her husband lived, they claim to see Mae Nak’s ghost around the place where her house used to be.

The informant learned this item from his grandmother while he was very young, perhaps 6 years old. The legend is usually told “by parents to young children so that if they misbehave something very bad will happen to them because the ghost of Mae Nak will come and get them.” “If you are concerned about the Buddhist context” then the story is “good and very deep,” according to the informant. However, he does not believe most people care very much about the story’s Buddhist themes, but rather “just as a ghost story.” The informant also states that the story is good because it helped him to “learn about people in an earlier time period and how they lived.”

I agree with the informant that the main purpose and value of the legend, besides its use by elders to scare children into behaving properly, seems to consist in its conveyance of the important Buddhist principle of “non-attachment” as the informant refers to it. However, despite its apparent connection to Buddhist belief and practice, it is interesting to find that one of the main events in the story—the encircling of the husband with a group of praying monks who are  connected to each other with a rope in order to keep Mae Nak away—is actually described by the informant as a practice which is not part of Buddhism but rather is a Thai folk belief. Since this practice ultimately fails with Mae Nak breaking through the sort of “force field” created by the praying circle of monks, while the teachings of the great Buddhist teacher Somdej Toh succeed in convincing Mae Nak to depart her husband and this world, it is quite possible that the legend is in fact asserting the efficacy of Buddhist teaching over mere Thai superstition. Finally, the story need not have a specifically Buddhist message (though this seems very clearly intended) but rather may serve to teach in general that we must know when to let go of something, such as a person or an endeavor, and simply move on instead of foolishly trying to hold on to it.

Upon more closely analyzing the story, I also found that the story’s main dilemma—namely, Mae Nak’s unwillingness to go to enter the spirit world—is resolved only on the third attempt, echoing the importance of the number three which pervades much of American folklore. In the legend, we find that the first attempt to persuade Mae Nak is made by one of the “superstitious” temple monks who is protecting her husband. Next, it is the husband himself who tries to convince his wife that a ghost and a man simply cannot remain together in this world. Finally, the famous Thai Buddhist teacher, Somdej Toh, enters the story for the third and final attempt, so wise and compelling that he is able to successfully demonstrate the foolishness of Mae Nak’s wish to remain with her husband in this world, and persuade her to depart this world for the next.

Annotation:

Nadeau, Kathleen, and Johnathan H.X. Lee. Encyclopedia of Asian-American Folklore and Folklife. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, LLC., 2011.

Folk Belief- China

Nationality: Chinese/Australian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Melbourne, Australia
Performance Date: April 25, 2011
Primary Language: English

Belief: Never give shoes, watches, and clocks as presents to someone

The informant learned the above Chinese folk belief from her mother, around the time that she “first started give presents,” which was about the age of 12. The item is to be performed “any time you’re going to give a gift.” The informant views this belief as “embedded” into her life, claiming that she “gets paranoid” about receiving these items as presents, since the belief was reinforced “so many times and for so long.”

Though the informant stated that giving the above items as presents is considered bad luck for the recipient according to this Chinese folk belief, she was uncertain why. Simply not giving these items as gifts to others serves here as a protection, as do many forms of folk belief, against bad omens. While the informant didn’t seem to know much about the reasoning behind this item, it was clear that, as with most folk beliefs, the belief was a product of her social circumstances and formed a part of her identity as Chinese, even though she lives in Australia.