Monthly Archives: May 2012

The Legend of Schloss Rannariedl in Austria

Nationality: Austrian
Age: 25
Occupation: Engineer
Residence: From Austria, currently traveling around North America
Performance Date: April 24, 2012
Primary Language: German
Language: English

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

Tommyknockers

Nationality: Irish-American
Age: 24
Occupation: Works for a Production Company
Residence: Los Angeles (from CO)
Performance Date: April 24, 2012
Primary Language: English

The informant tells the story of the Tommyknockers in his town

Tommyknocker

My informant, who comes from a small mining town in Colorado, says that everybody in his town knows about the Tommyknockers and the mining tunnels. However, he does note that they are indigenous to Idaho Springs, because nowhere else he’s gone has he heard about Tommyknockers, and even people down in Denver don’t know about these creatures and their interactions with the miners.

The story of the Tommyknockers is interesting and rife with cultural history. Most of the people of Idaho Springs either work or have parents who worked in the mines and quarries, which is one reason why the legend of the Tommyknockers is still so well known in the immediate community. These little creatures are of particular importance because of their interesting relationship with the miners of the town. Mining is a very laborious and dangerous job often held by less educated working-class citizens. With these two aspects compounded, it makes sense that the belief in and acceptance of these sprites is so widespread, because Tommyknockers can either lead a miner to a wealth of gold, or to their death, but the miner has no way of knowing one way or another. In this way, Tommyknockers mirror the way the miners live every day down in the mines: they might leave the mines a rich man, or not leave them at all.

Tommyknockers are similar to the leprechauns and other earth spirits in Celtic and English lore in appearance as well as in their defining characteristics. Just like traditional Celtic earth spirits, Tommyknockers are mysterious, dwarfy/leprechaun-type looking wily creatures that can either help or harm the miners in the tunnels of the mines. Not surprisingly, most of the miners in the mining town are of Irish decent, which makes sense why there Tommyknockers are in such close similarity with Irish sí and Celtic earth spirits.

Not only are Tommyknockers very demographic-specific, they are also incredibly location specific. Performing a piece of folklore about—in fact even knowing about—Tommyknockers immediately ties the person to Idaho Springs. And Idaho Springs has taken on Tommyknockers as a sort of town mascot, much like the Irish have done with the leprechaun. Not only do Tommyknockers bring a sense of community to the town with the lore surrounding the mines in which many work, but they also exist outside the realm of work: the town bar is called Tommyknocker Brewery & Pub and features a friendly, miner helmet-wearing Tommyknocker on both its awning and on the bottles of Tommyknocker beer that they brew, showing that the Tommyknocker has been adopted as a sort of mascot of the town, representing the town’s spirit as well as its past.

Chantry Flats, Santa Anita Canyon

Nationality: Taiwanese/Chinese-American
Age: 23
Occupation: Intern at a Film Production company
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English

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

Nationality: Taiwanese/Chinese-American
Age: 23
Occupation: Intern at a Film Production company
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English

‘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’

Nationality: American Cashew (Irish and Russian Jewish)
Age: 22
Occupation: Student/Musician
Residence: Los Angeles (from Boston)
Performance Date: April 25, 2012
Primary Language: English

“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.