Author Archives: Austen Le

The Lover’s Leap

Nationality: German American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Modesto, California
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant is from Modesto, California, up in the northern part of the state. This is an area that

“So there is a place off of the freeway right by my city called the Lover’s Leap, and it’s like a big cliff area that overlooks the area. According to legends, there was once a young man and a young woman who were part of different warring Native American tribes who fell in love with each other. However, their tribe elders would not let them be together, no matter how much they pleaded and begged, as the clans really hated each other. So, one day, the two lovers came together and decided to run off with each other, but they were discovered by their respective tribes, who went to go and tear them apart. As a result, they ran until they reached the edge of the cliff, and seeing that there would be no way for them to be together as long as their tribes fought, they both made the leap off of the cliff to their deaths, hence the name The Lover’s Leap. It’s a really sad story actually, and it reminds me a lot of Romeo and Juliet.”

Do a lot of people go there?

“Yeah, I mean, it’s a pretty cool place just to get a view of the surroundings, and a lot of younger people our age will go there to hang out and sometimes do illegal things though. I think its a neat part of the city’s history and its background.”

 

Collector’s Comments:

This story sounds almost exactly like Romeo and Juliet, although within a Native American context, which makes sense because California was inhabited by many different Native American tribes long before anyone else was here. This makes me wonder if the story itself had originated from the Native American peoples themselves, or if it was made up later by people who had known of Romeo and Juliet beforehand, and had adapted it to fit their own surroundings. Either way, it is a fascinating explanation for the name of a location.

St. Nicholas Day

Nationality: Italian/Austrian American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Redlands, California
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant is from Redlands, California, and is a descendant of Italian American refugees who came to the United States during World War II. This is a holiday that her family celebrates that is not commonly celebrated in California.

What exactly is St. Nicholas Day?

“So it’s a holiday that’s mainly celebrated in the Catholic communities in Southern Europe, like Italy, but it mostly celebrated in small rural areas all over. My family has celebrated it since I was born, but I haven’t really seen anybody else celebrate it, so I feel like it’s pretty unique to us. It’s on December 6th, and is about St. Nicholas, who is a guy who would go around during Christmas and give out toys and candy to impoverished children who are well behaved. It’s very much in line with Christmas, and is sort of a time where the little kids are reminded to be good.”

How is it celebrated?

“On the night of December 5th, you leave your shoes out on the porch, and when you wake up on the morning of December 6th, you find that your shoes filled with candies, cookies, and sweets. We also each got a card from St. Nick saying that we’ve been very good and to keep up the good work because Christmas was right around the corner. Now that I think about it, it was pretty much bribery for us to behave and value family so we would get good gifts for Christmas. If you were bad however, St. Nick’s assistant Rupert would come and beats you soundly with a holly stick, so nobody ever wanted to misbehave. This happens every year until you turn 18 years old, after which St. Nick no longer comes around. Even today, I’m not really sure who brought the gifts for us, cause I know it wasn’t my parents, but I think it was one of my distant aunts.”

Collector’s Comments:

To me, this sounded very much like a part of Christmas tradition, yet it had very unique rituals related to it that I had never heard of before. St. Nicholas is a common figure in Christmas folklore, yet I have never seen him celebrated in this way. This holiday reveals that even within the same religion, there are regional variations and celebrations that are related to similar concepts, but are very unique from each other. To see a celebration that sounds so familiar, yet is unlike anything that I’ve seen before is very interesting, and makes me wonder how all of these variations have developed from the same holiday.

 

 

 

 

A Vietnamese Proverb: Dark and Light

Nationality: Vietnamese
Age: 49
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: San Jose, California
Performance Date: April 22, 2017
Primary Language: Vietnamese
Language: English

This is a Vietnamese proverb that was told to me by my mother when I was very young:

“Gần mực thì đen gần đèn thì sáng.”

 

Literal translation:

“Close to ink then you are dark, close to light then you are bright”

 

This is a proverb often told to children, meaning that you should be careful with who you surround yourself with. People are shaped by others around them, and if one surrounds themselves with bad people (the dark) they will become bad, while if one surround themselves with good people (the light), then they will be a good person. This is a lesson about peer pressure, as well as a warning to young children about how friends, family, and peers can influence them.

 

Collectors Comments:

This is a proverb that has stuck with me for a long time since my mom first told me way back when. It reminds me of sayings such as “hanging with the wrong crowd” or other proverbs that deal with friend groups and peer pressure. This saying was my mom’s way of trying to teach me that I should be selective with my friends, and only hang around people that would make me better. The proverb makes use of the contrasts between black and white and dark and light that are common in so many cultures. While, I have heard similar proverbs in other languages, this is the first one I’ve heard that relates to ink as black and light to white.

 

The Jersey Devil

Nationality: Chinese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Freehold, New Jersey
Performance Date: April 18, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant is from a suburb in the center of New Jersey, in Monmouth County. She went to a boarding high school in rural Northern New Jersey however, in a very isolated area.

“We had this thing called a Freshman Retreat in my 9th grade year, which was at a campground called Camp No-Be-Bo-Sco, which was literally the same camp where they filmed Friday the 13th. Because of this, one of the nights we decided to watch Friday the 13th, and began telling each other scary stories to scare each other before bed. One of these stories was the Jersey Devil, which was a local legend. This is a story that basically anybody who is from New Jersey has heard of, and people tell it all the time.

So the Jersey Devil was like, this winged goat-like creature with hooves and horns that lives in the forests of New Jersey. Some lady a long time ago had a bunch of children, and when she had her 13th child, a devil popped out instead and flew away, which is now the Jersey Devil. Some of the campers said that it was near Trenton, but others said that it was near Blairstown, where we were. Either way, that had me really really scared. So the Jersey Devil would steal away young children from their parents. Uhh… It would either eat you, or raise you as its own child, but I can’t really remember. One thing I can remember though is that someone was saying that if it came into our cabins, it would take people who slept on the top bunk. I was also sleeping on the top bunk, right by the window, so I was thinking about it the whole night and was so scared.”

Why do you think people told this story?

“Now looking back at it, probably mostly to scare people, especially little kids. Like, the cabin we were at was a perfect place to tell it because it was so close to the woods. I even told my little brother the story once when he was being a brat, so he would shut up. But yeah, I guess it was mainly just to give people in New Jersey a fright.”

 

Collector’s Comments:

This is a pretty famous story that even I have heard of all the way in California, through a TV program about supernatural creatures. However, the informant, being in the woods in New Jersey, probably got the full experience and the most impact from hearing it. This local legend has become widespread across all of New Jersey, making it a piece of folklore that is shared through state identity, and I would say that it has become a part of New Jersey’s culture. It was very interesting to hear about it from a person who is actually from New Jersey, making the story seem more authentic than it was when I had seen it on television.

 

Lady Idyllwild

Nationality: German American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Anaheim, California
Performance Date: April 11, 2017
Primary Language: English

Informant recalls a story that he heard when he was in 7th grade, during a three-day school camping trip in the Idyllwild Mountains of the San Bernadino forest.

“I was in my cabin with a bunch of other classmates, and my friend’s brother, who was in 8th grade, began telling us a scary story. We were all huddled around when he started. So, it was basically a young married couple driving through the Idyllwild Mountains on a snowy day, when their car got stalled on the road. The husband is sitting in the passenger seat, and he gets out of the car to try and fix it, while his pregnant wife sits inside to wait for him. He opens the hood of the car to look inside, so now the wife can’t see him anymore because her view is blocked by the hood. After 20 minutes, the car has still not been fixed, and the wife realizes that she hasn’t seen or heard her husband at all. She gets out of the car into the snow, and realizes that her husband is nowhere to be found, even though the hood is still wide open. She looks around for a bit, and notices a perfectly straight red line in the snow, and wonders, “How did a straight line like that get there?” Then, she looks up and notices that her husband’s severed head is above her, attached to a tree by a rope, shooting blood and swinging like a pendulum, which is why the red line was there. I don’t really remember how, but the story goes that Lady Idyllwild appears suddenly, looking very pale white with white hair and a white dress, but with blood-red eyes. She kills the the woman somehow, and then after, for some reason, she warns the dead couple that tourists are not allowed on Mt. Idyllwild, although they’re already dead so I guess it’s a little too late. I think maybe Lady Idyllwild took the unborn baby. But yeah.”

Do you remember your reaction to the story?

“I literally could not sleep. I remember that the guy in the bunk above me couldn’t sleep either, so we sorta talked the whole night about how scared we were. My friend’s older brother, the guy telling the story, was sort of an asshole, so it totally made sense that he would try and scare us so bad right before bed. Also, it didn’t help that it was actually snowing outside of our cabin, and I had the bed right next to the window, so I couldn’t sleep at all.”

 

Collector’s Conclusions:

This sounds like a classic campfire/cabin story to scare younger children, especially in the informant’s situation at a sleepaway camp. Like many other ghost stories, this is one involving a ghostly woman, who is tied to a specific location, in this case, Mt. Idyllwild. The contrast between the white snow and the red blood is significant, perhaps indicating some symbolism related to females or motherhood, and the fact that Lady Idyllwild takes the woman’s baby hints towards some connection to motherhood. Parallels can be drawn between this story and the La Llorona legend, and others like it. For the informant, this folklore was probably more impactful because he was actually in he was in the location in which the story allegedly occurred, which is an example of context affecting belief.