Monthly Archives: May 2015

The Magic Potion

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Dog Groomer
Residence: Pomona
Performance Date: 4/23
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

”The ingredients are: apple cider vinegar, lemon, garlic, ginger, cayenne pepper, honey, and hot water. About a class worth for whoever is taking it. You can use it for pretty much anything. Whenever I’m feeling sick I’ll use it; all the ingredients have really good properties, so one of them is bound to help with something. I always use it when I have the flu.”

“My mom would always tell me to drink apple cider vinegar with honey and hot water, for pretty much anything that was wrong with you. I never really liked it like that. One of my friends gave me this recipe. You’d think the extra ingredients would make it taste worse, but they actually make it a lot easier to drink.”

Home remedies are often a popular way of dealing with everyday maladies, especially those which science currently has no “cure” or treatment for. The informant stated that she uses the remedy for a wide variety of ills, with the expectation that one of the ingredients is bound to help somehow. She had originally gotten a variety of the “potion” from her mother; which is common with home remedies. As parents are often a primary source of information while growing up, people have a tendency to retain lessons or advice from them, even as they grow older.

The informant stated that she never enjoyed the taste of her Mom’s remedy, though she would still use it if she got sick. Eventually she heard of the alternate form from a friend; she stated that she liked the flavor of the new formula more, and now uses that as an alternate. This shows an interesting fluctuation in the phenomenon stated above. Though she respected and followed her Mom’s advice for the remedy, she was also willing to change the recipe slightly into one which suited her tastes better. This illustrates how folk remedies can change over time: ingredients can be added (or removed in some cases) in order to better fit the sensibilities or tastes of the new user.

Wishcraft

Nationality: American
Age: 76
Occupation: Teacher
Performance Date: 4/29
Primary Language: English

“If there were witchcraft, I’d make two wishes,

a winding road that beckons me to roam,

and then I’d wish for a blazing campfire,

to welcome me when I’m returning home.

But, in this real world there is no witchcraft and golden wishes do no grow on trees.

Our fondest day dreams must be the magic that brings us back our happy memories.

Memories that linger, constant and true,

memories we’ll cherish, Camp Lo-Kai of you.

“I would sing this song at camp, always around a fire. We usually closed each night at camp with a big bon-fire. This would be the last song we’d sing before we headed to our cabins for the night! My friends and I just found out recently that the lyrics actually say “If there were wish craft”, so we’d been singing it wrong all this time! We do think the actual lyrics do make a little bit more sense than what we had been singing.”

Songs are an integral part of many camping experiences. In my mind, these songs help form a sense of community among the campers. This song in particular seems to evoke a certain nostalgia, a fondness for memories and a hope that the memories made during camp will last a lifetime. Indeed, this does seem to be the case for the informant, as she still meets with some of her camp friends, often singing this song when they do.

I found the shift in the lyrics interesting, especially given the fact that the informant and her friends came to like what was supposedly the original script of the song. This illustrates the change that is characteristic of folklore, but also brings up an important nuance: that this change is not always unidirectional, and can change back and forth depending on the sensibilities of the performer.

Irkchapitl

Nationality: USA
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 10, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“So there’s this character named Irkchapitl, who’s this weird blue entity. He never has a clear image, because every time this story is told he has a different appearance, but the way I see him is kind of like a crazy looking monkey. So he travels in a garbage can that’s actually a spaceship, and he often comes to visit kids on nights when they can’t sleep. Whenever Irkchapitl comes at night, he’ll take the kids into his garbage can that looks bigger on the inside than the outside, and then Irkchapitl and the kid will go on an adventure to faraway lands before returning to Earth before the morning.”

 

I got this from a friend at USC who said that her dad would always tell this to her, and that he got it from his dad who lived in Britain. No one in their family really knows from where their grandfather heard this or whether he just made it up, but I found it really interesting that each of her siblings and cousins apparently have different images of what Irkchapitl looks like. Also, the person I asked suspects that her dad later added the part about the spaceship being larger on the inside based on the British TV series Doctor Who, even though her dad denies it.

 

Knock-Knock Anti-Joke

Nationality: USA
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 29, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

“There’s this stupid knock-knock joke that my friend always did to me, and I kind of picked up on it and I do it all the time now. It just goes like this:”

 

Him: Okay lemme tell you this knock-knock joke.

 

Me: Okay, go for it.

 

Him: No but you have to start it.

 

Me: *looks puzzled* Wait what?

 

Him: Yeah you just start the joke!

 

Me: Uhhhh….. okay then, knock-knock?

 

Him: Who’s there?

 

Me: …………

 

*Awkward-but-hilarious silence ensues*

 

“So yeah that’s pretty much it, it’s kind of an anti-joke. I honestly don’t know why it’s so hilarious to me but it just is. I guess because it just makes the other person so confused and uncomfortable when they suddenly realize that the joke makes no sense whatsoever.”


This one is from one of my friends who’s lived in California his whole life and has pretty much been a joke-teller for all of his life. This is one of my personal favorites of his jokes, so I really wanted to include it. He said that he just learned it from one of his friends in elementary school, and it’s been a staple of his for years. Additionally, he said that the joke always entertains him and brings some joy to the atmosphere because of the confused reactions he gets.

Indiana Grizzlies

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 19, 2015
Primary Language: English

“There’ve been a number of sightings of grizzly bears around Crawfordsville [my hometown in Indiana], and my parents always used to warn me about them when I was little. Allegedly a while ago some family in Crawfordsville lost their kid in the woods one night, and the whole town basically blamed it on the bear. The weird thing is, grizzlies aren’t native to Indiana or any of the surrounding areas. It’s essentially like the sasquatch of Crawfordsville, because even though there have been a lot of sightings even recently, no one’s ever gotten a picture. Everyone is still afraid of it though.”

 

This is from my friend who comes from a small town in Indiana with a lot of folklore traditions. He’s lived there all of his life, and apparently there are a lot of these little local stories legends about his town which is awesome. He said that this one is kind of funny now, because he took it as such a serious threat when he was a kid, but now he doesn’t even believe in it.