Author Archives: Thomas Seli

Crossing Obstacles on the Same Side When in Groups

Nationality: Estonia
Age: 52
Occupation: Associate Professor at USC
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/20/2021
Language: Estonian, English, Russian

Background: My informant, HS, is a 52-year-old professor at USC. She was born and raised in Estonia and moved to the United States when she was twenty. Her mother and father were both physicians in Soviet Estonia. Even though she no longer lives in Estonia, she still stays connected with Estonian tradition through her involvement with the Los Angeles Estonian House and still speaks the Estonian language with family and friends. She also happens to be my mother.

Context: One lunch, during quarantine, I decided to sit down and interview my mother about interesting Estonian folklore she was aware of and has experienced.

Main Piece:

“If you are in a group of people, or even two people, and you come to a post of any kind, you have to cross on the same side so that there will be nothing that comes in between your relationship to splinter the relationship. So it avoids conflict or, y’know, teaches you or makes sure that if you have conflict you resolve it in a way that you stay in a relationship.”

Interpretation: This is essentially a superstition to avoid bad relationships. I have never noticed this when I visited Estonia but I am sure that people were doing this as they were walking down the street. It seems that if a group of people split up to go around some kind of post in the street, whether it be a mail box or stop sign, it reflects a breaking of bond in a sense and a reflection of a dysfunctional relationship. My personal interpretation is that many Estonians likely believe in some kind of bond or energy that unifies groups. If a group splits up to walk around an obstacle, then the group is no longer unified and the group relationship will likely go south. 

Leo Carillo Amphitheater

Background: The informant is a 14-year-old high school freshman living in El Segundo, California. The informant is my brother.

Context: After family dinner, my brother overheard a conversation about folklore I was having with my parents and he seemed interested, so I decided to explain the field of folklore to him and even interview him on some of the folklore he was aware of.

Main Piece: The informant described he and his friends stumbled upon an abandoned amphitheater on a trip to Leo Carillo State Park a few years ago.

Informant: Me and my friends would go there and there was like, or like the amphitheater, it was said like ‘Oh if you go in there, you die’. We would always get, f*cking, scared sh*tless whenever we would go near that.

Collector: Who said that?

Informant: I don’t know dude; it was like my friends and there was just like that story of that amphitheater.

Collector: So, it was an amphitheater in the middle of the forest?

Informant: No, the slender forest (another piece of folklore my brother has described to me before) and the amphitheater are two different things. It was just a tiny abandoned amphitheater.

Collector: And none of you ever went in there?

Informant: No, never. We barely ever went NEAR it dude. We would like ride our bikes there, and we would just run away.

Interpretation: This story of the haunted amphitheater is a great example of how children can create folklore about haunted or abandoned places without any prior knowledge or local lore. The informant and his friends obviously believed their saying “If you go in there, you die” because they clearly tried to avoid the place as much as possible. I find it interesting that the ghost stories I’ve heard from adults seem to have much more of a narrative, whereas the ghost stories or haunted places my brother has described to me when he was much younger are not so much narratives, but rather simple scares or sayings such as “If you go in there, you die”. Perhaps analyzing the differences between how adults and children tell their haunted tales can provide some interesting insights into the genre of ghost folklore.

Garlic Necklace

Nationality: United States
Age: 14
Occupation: High School Freshman
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant is a 14-year-old high school freshman living in El Segundo, California. The informant is my brother.

Context: After family dinner, my brother overheard a conversation about folklore I was having with my parents and he seemed interested, so I decided to explain the field of folklore to him and even interview him on some of the folklore he was aware of.

Main Piece: My brother described that one time when he got really sick, our grandmother (who is an Italian immigrant) put a garlic necklace around his neck to help him with his sickness. He believes that garlic has health benefits when it comes to illness and Italians used garlic necklaces as a folk remedy.

Interpretation: I did not even know that my grandmother had done this. Because I was interested in this folk remedy, I did a little bit of research and found that garlic necklaces were used to ward off evil spirits. I believe that sickness was likely associated with evil spirits and garlic necklaces were used to ward off the evil spirits and heal the sick. However, interestingly there has been scientific research that has found that garlic contains alliin, which is one of the most powerful antibiotics in the world.  

Sea Cucumber Kissing

Nationality: United States
Age: 14
Occupation: High School Freshman
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/19/2021
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant is a 14-year-old high school freshman living in El Segundo, California. The informant is my brother.

Context: After family dinner, my brother overheard a conversation about folklore I was having with my parents and he seemed interested, so I decided to explain the field of folklore to him and even interview him on some of the folklore he was aware of.

Main Piece: The informant described that on a fifth-grade field trip to Catalina Island off of the coast of California there was a specific point where the local workers at CIMI (Catalina Island Marine Institute) brought out a sea cucumber from one of the tanks they had and told the class that if you kissed the sea cucumber you would receive 7 years of good luck.

Interpretation: This was actually a piece of contagious superstition that I was already aware of. Years prior, I had been on the same field trip my brother went on since we went to the same elementary school. I believe that the reason kissing a sea cucumber yields good luck is because it takes a bit of courage to do it. While it might be easy to sit in comfort and imagine giving a little smooch to a sea cucumber, when you actually have one of those slimy, salty, and gross looking creatures in front of you and you are asked if you want to kiss it, there is a solid chance that you will simply refuse. However, mustering the stomach to kiss one of those slimy things ends up rewarding the brave with a solid seven years of good fortune! 

‘Tarantella’ Dance

Nationality: United States
Age: 52
Occupation: Business Consultant
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/29/2021
Primary Language: English

Background: My informant is a 52-year-old with Italian heritage. Both his mother and father are from Mola di Bari, a seaside town in Southern Italy. The informant was born in Toronto, Canada and moved to Santa Monica, California at a young age. While he was not born or raised in Italy, the strong Italian roots in his family meant that Italian culture and tradition was still very prevalent in his household. The informant is also my father.

Context: During a car ride, I asked my father about interesting Italian folklore he knew about while growing up in an Italian family.

Main Piece: “This is a very famous Italian tradition, basically every Italian wedding I have been to has it. It’s the ‘tarantella’, the dance of the tarantula. Basically, as I understand it: Taranto is a town in southern Italy, which is actually near Bari where our family is from, and in the middle ages someone was bitten by a poisonous tarantula, and the myth had it that she went into a trance and the only way to get her out of the trance was by encircling the woman and doing a really frenzied dance with a unified rhythm. So, whenever you go to Italian festivals, Italian celebrations, and particularly Italian weddings you often times will see everyone doing the ‘tarantella’, which is basically a circle or a group of people surrounding the bride or the groom and they are all kind of moving in unison. You know, obviously they are not trying to remove a demon, but what they are trying to do is just create a spirit of happiness. But the ‘tarantella’ is very prominent in all kinds of Italian festivals, and it was born out of this myth that the only way that this woman could be saved was by doing this frenzied dance around her so that it would basically exorcise the demon that was in her because she was in a trance having been bitten by a tarantula.”

Interpretation: I have never been to a traditional Italian wedding or festival, so I was not aware of this dance. I found it very interesting that a dance whose origin apparently comes from exorcising a demon is now common in traditional Italian weddings. However, from what I can tell these seems to more of a legend then a myth. Nonetheless a very interesting folk dance with an interesting backstory.