Author Archives: Megan Angulo

The Princess Who Never Cried

Nationality: Irish American
Age: 75
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Phoenix, Az
Performance Date: March 15, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: --

The piece being performed is a story the informant first heard when she was a little girl, at 8 or 9 years old (~1948).  She said she thinks she heard it first at a little theatre group that used to put on plays.  She was adamant that it was definitely something told out loud and not read from a book.

Me: Can you retell the bedtime story about the princess who could not cry for me?

Informant: Sure, so once upon a time there was this beautiful princess in a kingdom far far away. She had everything you could possibly want. She had toys, servants waiting on her and beautiful clothes. She couldn’t possibly want for anything else. However there was something that really really bothered the king and queen… and that was the fact that the princess never cried. If she was sick, she never cried. If she fell and hurt herself,  she never cried. If any of her toys broke, she never cried. So the king puts out a proclamation. Anybody who could make the princess cry would receive a grand award. They could receive anything they want. So, they had court jesters who would come in and would do strange things. They would hit each other, be mean to each other, still the princess didn’t cry. Then they had some scary people come in with funny looking faces and scary costumes, and still the princess never cried. Then they had some people come in and start breaking up her dolls and toys. She still did not cry. And after all this, the king and the queen were so distraught. They were besides themselves. Remember, the proclamation said that anybody in the kingdom would could make the princess cry would receive  the award and have anything they want. So this one day, a little old lady, kind of dressed like a peasant, comes with a basket, covered by a towel. She approaches the palace gates and says, “I have come to make the princess cry.” The guards say, “get out of here you old lady, you couldn’t possibly a make the princes cry.” They were so loud that the king heard them, and he said “whats going on out here?” The guards said “this old lady thinks she can make the princess cry.” The king was so desperate, that he opened the gates and let the old lady come in. They get the princess and bring her to the old lady. The old lady takes the towel off the basket, and inside are a couple of onions.  So the old lady takes a knife and starts to cut and peel the onion. And with that, a tear wells up in her eyes, and the princess starts to cry. And everybody was so jubilant, finally the princess cried! And guess what, it only took that little old lady and a couple of onions to make the princess cry. Everyone was jubilant and lived happily ever after.

Me: What do you think is the significance of the story?

Informant: It is not a perfect world, you can live in a kingdom and be a princess and there can still be things wrong with your life. And eve though its a king and a queen, they were still concerned about their child, wanted her to be normal and they knew it was not normal for her to never cry/be emotionless.

My Interpretation: My grandma used to tell me this story before bed when I was a little girl.  I knew it by heart when I was younger, but I distinctly remember always asking her to tell it to me again.  I find it so compelling because the it does not have an obvious moral lesson as most short stories do.  My take away is to think outside the box.  There may be a simple solution to a problem that takes a little extra thinking to figure out.  When I was younger, I just used the story as an excuse to stay up past my bedtime and cuddle with my grandma.

Native American Ring

Nationality: Irish American
Age: 75
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Phoenix, Az
Performance Date: March 15, 2015
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 75 year old Irish woman. The piece collected is a folk item, specifically a genuine turquoise ring set in silver. It was created and designed by a Navajo Native American and acquired by the informant in 1970.

Me: When did you acquire the ring?

Informant: “When I came out for a family funeral. My brother in-law knew some Native Americans who used to make jewelry and previously purchased other jewelry from them. After admiring the ring, my brother in law, Bill, gave it to me. He had probably acquired it a couple years prior. We were just talking about indian jewelry, earrings and necklaces… but I liked rings. The funeral was in Scottsdale, Arizona. When the person Bill was dealing with used to make the jewelry, he would engrave his signature in all the pieces, which in turn makes it more valuable today. At this same time, I also received another piece from him. It was a necklace, made on elastic with silver rings, and around the rings were little birds. The birds were made of Quartz, gold, yellow, white and pink. The necklace was not signed, but I received it at the same time as the ring.

Me: What do you think is the significance of the ring?

Informant:  Well it has feathers on it, which are typically used during certain ceremonies. It is important to their culture.

My interpretation: The ring is definitely handmade, and it does have a worn down signature engraved on the inside of it.  My thought is that the Native American that Bill bought it from probably makes a lot of these types of rings and sells them to Americans and tourists. The feathers, turquoise stone and general style definitely resemble what would be thought as “authentically” Native American. Whenever I go on vacation, to places like Montana, Wyoming, Texas and Alaska, I always see people selling jewelry of a similar style, which leads me to believe that while it may be handmade and one of a kind, it is part of a larger trend.

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Haunted House

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Charlotte, NC
Performance Date: March 20, 2015
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 21 year old girl and one of my good friends.  She mentioned once living across the street from a haunted house, so when interviewing her, I asked her to give me details about this house.  The house in the story is located in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Informant: Back in the 20s or the 30s, everyone says that the house across the street- from my newer house in the past 10 years- was owned by a dentist and his wife and three kids [all below the age of ten]. It is said that he got really stressed at work one day and that he was bipolar and he came back home and locked his wife and kids in the garage and then burnt the house down. Like put gas all around the house and burnt it down. And they said that he went to jail and everything. No one really knows if it is true or not because it was back in the 20s but that is the haunted scary story around my neighborhood. People live in it now. And I think people just think that it is evil. It is one of those hosues that everyone points out when you drive by it. Since it is owned by people, you can’t go inside.

Me: How long have you known that story?

Informant: Known that story since I was in middle school.

Me: Who told it to you?

Informant: My old neighbor told it to me… their dad. He was like 40 at the time, and it was my old neighbor though, so that was like 15 miles away from the house. So it is not just in my area that people know about it.  It is all of Charlotte that knows that it is the scary house. It just happens to be across the street from me now.

Me: Why do you think people think it is haunted?

Informant: People think it is haunted because they think that the kids and the wife are haunting the house now because they were burned inside there. (lots of giggling)

Me: Do you belive it?

Informant: I believe that a guy did do that because so many people say that he did. I don’t know if I believe that it is haunted. I believe in ghosts. But mostly nice ghosts. I do not believe they are there to hurt people. I just think it scares people. Jeez you should ask [informant featured here] about ghosts.

Me: Okay, I will

Informant: No… I do believe in ghosts. I think they are just lingering spirits. Just remnants of souls are around, and I do not think they mean any harm. So I would not say it is haunted, but I do believe that there is probably spirits if that did happen.

My analysis: I think it is interesting how the informant chooses to believe only in nice ghosts, not in mean or scary ones.  She also mentioned believing that ghosts are lingering spirits and souls of the deceased. This too is interesting because there is no scientific evidence or hard data of any sort to prove that humans even have souls. The concept of souls, in and of itself, is a folkloric belief.  The informant’s belief in kind ghosts aligns perfectly with her personality.  Her beliefs are clearly molded by the way she was raised and her naturally bubbly, happy demeanor.

Danish Tounge-Twister

Nationality: Danish, Persian, American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Chicago, Il
Performance Date: April 25, 2015
Primary Language: English

The informant is a 19 year old male whose mother is Persian and father is Danish. He is not fluent in Danish, but knows little bits and pieces. He told me about a series of tongue twisters that he learned growing up.  His cousins would tease him with these tongue twisters because Danish is one of the hardest languages to pronounce.  Here is one of the ones he best remembers.

Danish: Fem flade flødeboller på et fladt flødebollefad

Translation: Five flat cream puffs on a flat cream puff plate

Analysis: This would be the equivalent to something like “Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore. But if Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore then where are the sea shells Sally sells?”  Because Danish is such a difficult language to learn, tongue twisters such as these are something that Danish people can take pride in knowing how to say.  I cannot even figure out the phonetic pronunciation of that tongue twister.  The translation is not particularly important, though, considering the point of the phrase is not to be thought-provoking but to be hard to say.  There are tongue twisters like these in almost every language, so it is a widespread practice and fun thing for all different people to participate in.

Crash Course in Indian Culture (Holi/Colors/Bindi/Henna)

Nationality: Indian, American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Miami, Fl
Performance Date: March 30th, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Hindi

Continued from the prior interview. Collected from 20 year old female. Indian, raised Hindu. Here she talks about the festival of Holi, as well as the importance of color and how that is demonstrated at weddings and in traditional garb.

Informant: In the spring we celebrate Holi, h-o-l-i. That is when everyone throws colors at eachother . That is for a couple of reasons. This one is hard because I don’t know the whole story about it, I just know the general gist. There is a demonness, like a bad guy who is a woman. And her name is holika, h-o-l-i-k-a. That’s where the name comes from. And I am pretty sure she was evil and somehow either she just died in a fire or someone killed her using fire, but because she finally died, we all celebrate holi as we all are hapypy becuasse spring came out of that. So holi is also the celebration of the start of spring. That is why you throw colors and stuff because spring… colors… happy. So when you celebrate holi, everyone has a bunch of colored powder and a bunch of water and you just kind of throw them at eachother and you say happy holi. It is also a happy time. I don’t think… maybe it is just we never celebrated them… but we don’t have any depressing holidays. You know how like Jewish people have Yom Kippur and stuff like that. We don’t really have that because there is no like, in Hinduism there’s not really like in Christianity and Judiaism where hthey have sins and atonement and all that crap. Hinduism, which is really why I like it, it is not about doing bad things and making up for them, it is more just about positive ways to live your life. So that is why they are all around central tennents like karma… doing good things comes around. That is a huge thing for Hinduism. There are a lot of other stories. There are books. The ramayan is all about rama, but there are a lot of gods in Hinduism. There is another book that is about a lot of them. It is called the mahabaharta. That is the story of ginesh, who is our elephant god. There are a lot of stories in it, but one of the stories that is the most important is talking about ginesh and how he is with his parents and basically the reason why in Hinduism your parents are so important is because someone told ginesh “circle around your world twice.” And what he did was walk around his parents twice because your parents are supposed to be your world. There are just a lot of loyalty stories like that. There is another story, that is called the gita, I think that is g-i-t-a. bhavagad gita. People chant that.

Me: what do you mean they chant it?

Informant: there are a lot of verses to it and sometimes when you pray, some people have whole chapters memorized and they will say them. But that is a very long story. That story is about a normal human guy named arjun. He is in a war. It is a war between 2 families. He is on one side and all of his brothers are on the other side. And he doesn’t know whether he should or shouldn’t fight against his family. He doesn’t know what to do. So he is visited by a god named krishna, who is one of the gods that is always depicted as blue. And the god coaches him and talks him through what he should do. And that is basically the whole gita. It is another story about loyalty and karma. Those are the main things of Hinduism which is again why I like it. It is really not an intrusive religion. It is very spiritual, like these are some good things that you should keep with you as you live your life. It is a pretty chill religion.

Me: Where did you learn all of this?

Informant: Sunday School. When I started to go to Sunday school in kindergarden, it was held out of a temple because it was very few people. But then it expanded and all of these indian people came out of no where. Then there was like hundreds of kids so we started having it at an actual elementary school because we needed to have classrooms. It totally expanded… because you know indian people run the world. It got crazy. We had a website, they published a text book for us. We got sweatpants and sweatshirts. It went crazy.  There are a lot of kids who already know everything because their parents teach it to them, obviously my parents know it too. My grandparents reallyyyyy know this stucf because older generations know it more. My parents wanted me to go to Sunday school because they wanted me to make some indian friends. It wasn’t really about learning hindi. My Sunday school we had language class and we had culture class. The culture class was where we learned all of this religious stuff. Or culture stuff. We talked about the differences between americans and Indians and all that kind of stuff. And hindi class, like language class, is specifically where you just learn hinidi or gidrathi. Hinidi is the language my mom’s side of the family speaks and gidrathi is the langage my dad’s side of the family speaks. They’re from 2 different parts of india. We just learned hindi because I think hindi is the national language of india so my parents were just like, ehh. My mom is very fluent in hindi, she is a hindi teacher so they were like, just learn hindi. So that is what we learned. That is all hindu stuff. As far as indian cultural stuff goes… but then again at the same time, if we are going to talk about weddings as being an indian thing. At the same time, there are a lot of different religions within India. They all have different wedding. Muslim weddings are way different than hindu weddings. And so I guess this is still hindu, but the whole idea is like, everything is still really loud and fun and colorful. Brides wear red, you know that. They always wear a sari. We put… in English it is henna… in hindi it is mehndi. I wish I knew the significance of it. I honestly think it is just a really beautiful art form. I am sure there is a story or a reason why we put it on, but I think it is just another way to make you look really beautiful. It goes on your hands, your feet, sometimes up your arm to your elbow at least. So the bride gets the most intricate mendhi, and everyone else in the bridal party gets both of their hands done. They make weddings really colorful because it is such a happy event. White is actually a sad color. So at funerals, when we have them, everyone wears white. No one wears black. Black is never worn to anything. And also, we don’t really have funerals. People don’t really get buried. We have cremations. Hindus believe in reincarnation. So if you are burned than your ashes go up and you can come back as something nice if you did good things in your life.

Me: Do you know why white is sad? Because that is the opposite of American culture

Nayna: I think it is because how people see white as pure and clean, that is our thing. So white is pure and cleansing so you wear that just to celebrate because when you creamate someone that is their purest form. You are burning them. I think that is why white is a nice color like that. Because black is just like never touched. We never wear black to anything. I don’t think white is really a sad color actually, it is really just a very full circle, ending color. Everything else, happy events, everything is always colorful. Weddings are always super colorful. Colors are hugely symbolic in the hindu culture. Holi is huge. You make these things called remgolis and they are basically big pieces of art and they are all different shapes and you color them in with the colored powder. Color is huge. Like indian women wear bindis on their foreheads when they wear their indian clothes. But also when religious ceremonies happen, you put a tikka on your head, but you use red powder and make a dash. That’s religious. Bindis are more for fun, to be pretty. More art and decoration for your body. There is a lot of hindu things. Boys, when they turn 11, 12, 13 or 16, some teenage year, they have something called a thread ceremony and only boys have it. It is like a right of passage, becoming an adult thing. It is a lot of prayers. You get threads tied around you as a bracelet and you keep it on for a while. We actually use a lot of thread in Hinduism. I think temples have what they think is holy thread. It is really just normal red thread. A little prettier. There is some red, some gold. We do a lot with thread. Another thing we do is, it is called rakshabandan. It is a brother sister day. Sisters tie a rakhi, it is like a bracelet, on their brother. It can just be a piece of red yarn or a thread. My sister and I like to make it fun, so we make a bracelet for our brother. So basically that is supposed to be protection for him. For all bad things that could come his way. So raksha means protection. Bandan means to tie. So literally tieing protection on your brother. And then your brother gives you like a present or something on that day. You feed him something sweet. You tie your rhaki, and he gives you a present. So it is like sisters protect brothers, brothers protect sisters, something like that. Oh by the way, I think I was supposed to tell you that like the bindi. The significance is that it is supposed to be like a third eye. So it is supposed to ward off evil. It is supposed to look over you. Red is really important. It used to be in the olden days that married women would put the same red power that you put here [touching space between eyes], they used to put it in their parts. In the part of their hairs. That is supposed to signify that you are married.

Me: Do you know why the part of their hair?

Informant: I guess it just so that you do not have to wear it on your forehead. It is very old. People do not walk around with that anymore. It used to be. Married women also tend to wear a red bindi. And widowed women wear a black bindi. My gradmother, when her husband passed ago, way before I was born, she always wears a black bindi on her forehead. Sorry… I keep talking!

Analysis: The informant does a lot of subtle analyzing of what she is saying as she goes.  She clearly takes a lot of traditions and myths with a grain of salt.  Rather than actually believe xyz, she believes in the moral behind it.  She already understands that reason why there are a lot of traditions and stories which makes my analysis much less needed.