Author Archives: tyang047

Russian Fairy Tale – The Frog Bride

The fairy tale told is a Russian version of the Frog Bride story. To briefly summarize, two sons of a man go find a bride through a process of shooting a bow and arrow, and the older son brings back a daughter of a rich man while the younger son brings back a frog. The father then proposes three challenges that each bride must face – baking a magnificent loaf of bread, weaving a beautiful tapestry, and presenting themselves to the father of the sons at a party. The younger son is worried about the frog bride, but the frog bride ends up completing the first two tasks fantastically while her groom is asleep. Every night, she takes off her frog skin and becomes a beautiful woman, and completes the tasks. Before the final task, the party, she asks her groom to go away and meet her at the party. Rather than completely leaving, the son instead spies on his bride, and sees that she takes off her frog skin to become a woman. While they are at the party, the son sneaks away and burns the frog skin, unknowingly continuing his bride’s frog curse that would’ve gone away on its own had he not interfered directly. The more detailed telling can be found below: 

“So two brothers – the father is saying “I’m getting older, so I’m going to leave you the house, but I want you two to bring me a bride first. Each of you get a bow and arrow, and shoot the arrow into any direction. You go and find the arrow, and whichever house it hits, you’re going to marry the girl. Bring me the girl, and I’ll check her out. The older brother shoots the arrow and gets the girl who has a rich dad. The other brother shoots the arrow, and finds that it’s in the middle of the woods in a swamp. When he walks up to find the arrow, he finds a frog sitting on a lily pad who has an arrow. He has no choice but to take the frog and bring it to the dad. She [the frog], of course, is fully aware and speaks perfect Russian. He’s completely mortified and embarrassed, he’s afraid that everyone is going to laugh at him. So anyways, the father says great! You got the girls! There are certain tasks that the ladies have to do to prove themselves. The younger son comes back and is very upset, and the frog asks what’s wrong. He says the first task is you have to perform – you have to bake the bread. Not just any bread, it has to be an amazing, fabulous creation. And she says don’t you worry, go to bed, in the morning it’s going to be alright. And so, she goes and she changes out of her frog skin into this beautiful girl, and takes the skin and hides it in a little box and puts it away. She bakes this beautiful piece of bread – almost like a castle out of the bread. The next morning, he wakes up – here she is again as a little frog – and then there’s this huge beautiful bread creation. So he goes to the father; the other brother’s girl bakes this like whatever flour bread, and she’s upset. The father is like “this is not even the bread.” And the younger brother brings this other huge loaf of bread that is amazing and beautiful and tastes great. And of course the father is impressed, and the boy is happy. And then the father is like, okay there’s a second thing that your girl has to do. She has to make a rug – create a tapestry. And so the boy comes back home, very upset and concerned that she won’t be up to the task, and of course the same thing – she says don’t worry, go to sleep. It will be alright. So of course the same thing happens, she puts the skin away in a little box and hides it away, creates this beautiful tapestry with a scenery of a castle… blah blah blah. Next morning, he wakes up, there’s this gorgeous tapestry. He’s so surprised, and takes it to his dad. Of course the other girl does not even compare, and the father is like whatever – loser… And so the youngest brother’s bride of course wins again. The father says that the third and final task that I need you to do is – I want to meet your ladies. So I’m going to throw a big celebration and party tomorrow, and you have to present your girls. And so they have to prepare their best dress, their best appearance. And he goes home to his froggy and he says “I don’t know what to do – Dad wants you to appear tomorrow at the party. And I don’t know, it’s going to be embarrassing.” and of course she says, you know, “Don’t worry, go to bed and we’ll see, everything is going to be okay.” The following morning, she goes to the party, she sends him off. She goes on her own, and drops her skin, and puts it in a little box. Meanwhile, the younger son is spying on her, trying to see what she’s going to do. So he sees her hide her skin in the box. The son goes ahead to the party, the frog shows up to the party as a gorgeous girl, in a beautiful dress, and everybody is so surprised and so amazed. And of course he himself is very impressed. And so they started dancing, and the father says show us your best dance – present yourself. So the music starts, and they’re all eating and drinking, and the guy watches her and the other bride watches her intently to see what she does to copy her. The woman eats her chicken legs, and instead of throwing it out she puts it in one sleeve, and drinks a little bit of wine and instead of leaving it she pours it into her other sleeve. So then she gets up and starts dancing and she waves one arm, and instead of wine, there spills a beautiful blue lake in front of everybody, and she waves the other and there’s beautiful swans that start swimming in the lake. The other girl tries to do the same thing and starts dancing to do the same thing, and of course she waves her arm and splashes the red wine and chicken bones in everyone’s faces. Meanwhile, the youngest brother thinks – if I don’t do something about the skin, she’s going to turn back into a frog tomorrow, and I don’t want that to happen. So while the girl is entertaining the party, he sneaks away and throws the skin into the fire. Then, as she comes back from the party, she’s disappointed and devastated and she says “I can’t believe you’ve done that, you didn’t trust me.” And she basically tells him that somebody put a curse on her, and she only had a few more hours left of the curse, and if he hadn’t burned the skin, she would’ve stayed as a proper girl. And so he messed it up, and now she has to come back to whoever that evil person was and continue the curse. And of course he’s devastated, and his dad is like “what happened to your woman” and he says “I don’t know! I messed up.”

At this point, the teller stated that the rest of the story was quite blurry to her, and that she could only recall a vague sequence of quests that the prince had to go through in order to rescue his bride from the curse. She explains that the latter half of the tale is essentially demonstrating that the man has to go through suffering and challenges for his mistake that cost his bride. 

Context: The story was told to me through a phone call from a friend’s mother after I had asked said friend for any folk stories that she knew of, and she had offered to call her mom for stories that she potentially would know of. The teller notes that this story is a well known old Russian folk tale that she couldn’t attribute to any particular author, though she notes that multiple adaptations like animations and movies have been made of the tale. 

Analysis: This tale is a telling of the classic Frog Bride/Animal Bride fairy tale, which is ATU 402. The latter half of the story that the teller is unclear on is also an iteration of ATU 400, the quest for the lost wife. While the tale is told in a more casual context, there is still the appearance of some classical traditions in the telling of folk narratives. For example, this telling of the tale notably features repetition, with the teller repeating how the frog bride tucks away her skin in a box for each night, and the repetition of how the frog bride comforts her husband. The telling of the story also notably features the Law of Three’s, in how the frog bride must overcome three challenges in order to prove herself to her groom’s father. Part of the reason that the teller may not have been able to remember the latter half of the full story is that, in adding the quest for the lost bride, the tale breaks its adherence to traditional structures of folklore and creates a clear first and second half. 

In replacement for the second half of the tale, the teller instead offered an animated adaptation of the tale, provided at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhvycdfXpXY. At the time of this writing, I have yet to take a proper look at the film. However, this moment does point to how modern media and the Internet allows for individuals to “check” their folk knowledge against other instances of a particular form of folklore – a sort of modern iteration of Walter Anderson’s “Law of Self Correction.”

Nigerian Burial Myth

“God was like, to this one dog – cause everyone lived together in a realm or whatever – he was like “dude, go fetch the bones of these little guys to ensure that once they die, they do the little cycle and they come back here” – it’s like a loop. And the dog is like, well let me just go ask this one random sheep to do the work for me. But that doesn’t work out well, cause the sheep is just fucking tired and lazy as hell apparently. And so that disrupts the connection between everyone, being like, in harmony with each other because they couldn’t bury the people’s bones. I think what happened is that it created the separation between the creator and his creations, and condemned the people to mortality, so they couldn’t do the loop.”

Context: The teller attributes their knowledge of the story to their Nigerian mother, who offhandedly and vaguely mentioned the story in a conversation. The teller then individually did their own research into the details of the myth through the internet out of personal curiosity. The story was told to me in a casual conversational context after I asked if they knew of any legends, myths, or stories that they could tell me. 

Analysis: The narrative presented here acts as a creation myth that works to explain the nature of human mortality and separation from the gods as well as provide reasoning for traditional burial practices. The teller does not give a specific identity to the main God, but the identities of the other figures are attributed to specific animals. While the teller originally learns of this myth from a parent, in order to gain the full story, the teller had to seek a full understanding of the story through the Internet. Their process of learning of the story points to the new role that the internet plays in the transmission of myths and other folk narrative through generations and populations; in order to gain the full picture of a particular narrative, individuals may be more inclined to look towards sources on the internet to confirm their understanding of the narrative or fill in the holes of areas that they may have missed. Even so, the telling of the myth still manages to change as it is reconveyed through human speech, and the teller chooses to focus on specific aspects of the story over the other. When comparing the teller’s version of the story to the source that they provided as a reference (https://sites.pitt.edu/~dash/burydead.html), it is clear that the details and styles are changed, though the core points of the story are still conveyed due to the specific sequence of events and core details that are included. 

Hookman Urban Legend

“A young couple is like driving a car in the mountains or something. And they’re just talking to each other, having a good time. It’s dark, it’s night. This is before like phones were a thing. And they heard on the radio that recently a serial killer escaped from the nearby prison and he’s on the run and you can recognize him because he has a hook instead of a right hand. And the young couple was like, okay that’s scary but whatever, and they turned it off. They parked their car somewhere, and they were just chilling in a car and doing what a young couple in a car would do. They get startled because… oh man… what happens? I think something starts banging on the roof of the car or something… or no? Maybe they just hear creaking on the roof of the car. And they go, oh shoot, something is on top of the car. And they quickly get back into their seats and they drive off. Later on, they see there was a bloody hook attached to their car handle.”

Context: This story was told to me after requesting the teller for any pieces of narrative folklore that he knew of. The teller attributes this piece of folklore to a book of campfire stories he read in a store when he was a Cub Scout. While that was his most impressionable encounter with the story, he notes that the story had been told multiple times during his experience as a Boy Scout. 

Analysis: This “Hookman” story is a common urban legend of the modern age that, as the teller notes, is shared as a common scary campfire story. In the modern day, it can be clearly dated as something of the generalistic “past,” a time, as the teller says, before the modern era of phones but still a recognizable scene for an average American. This specific telling of the story is interesting due to how the fluidity of the story is shown through how the teller explains the legend. During multiple moments throughout the telling, the teller shuffles between specific details of what may have happened, though the core events of the story remain the same and undisputed. During the telling, prior to the text, the teller even admits that he views the story not as a specific procedure of events, but rather as a list of bullet points. When compared to the noted “oral formulaic method” of professional traditional storytellers, this instance of the telling can be said to follow this method somewhat through the formula of events, but the actual performance and style lacks a specific formula that allows the story to retain a syntactical consistency. This instance of the Hookman story thus acts as an example of how stories are shifted as they are passed on from person to person. 

Nian Myth

“So there’s this village that gets terrorized by this monster called Nian every year, and they all gathered and said “we’re sick of thai shit! We’re going to go hide in the mountains this year so Nian can’t get to us.” But then there’s this one guy who, last year, Nian got to his family, so he was like “I have nothing to lose, I’m going to stay here! I don’t want to go run, I’m tired.” And so he stays at home, but then, as Nian is approaching – as the day is drawing near – this old lady, who is later revealed to be a God, comes by and is like “I have a request for you: I need you to go hang up a red cloth on the door.” And this guy is like what the fuck why. And later on we found out it’s because Nian is scared of the color red but he [the man] doesn’t know that yet. And then she’s like “actually, I’m hungry, so I want to eat dumplings – you should make dumplings for me.” And he’s like “what the fuck why” but he can’t say no to a sweet old lady, so he goes to make dumplings. And the dumplings make a “dududududududu” sound as he’s mincing up the meat. He doesn’t know why he’s doing it but we find out that it’s because Nian is scared of loud noises, and that becomes the culture of making loud noises and setting firecrackers to ward off the Nian. And then Nian gets scared away, and they’re [the villagers] are like woah, this shit worked. And so this becomes a culture of how to keep Nian away.”

At this point, I asked to hear another version of the same story from a second teller. He began telling the story in a dramatic, kind of sarcastic impression of an old man. 

“A long, long time ago, there was a village in a deep forest in China. This village was terrorized by a monster called Nian everyday… I don’t know.”

We interrupted this moment to laugh at the mistake and correct the line. 

“Then, the village people angrily said “what do we do!?” Then, an old man from the corner says “you want to know how to defeat the Nian?” The village people said “yes, please old man. Please tell me!” And then, the old man says “if you want to defeat Nian, you must wear red colors. The Nian is very afraid of red. And you must also make big explosive sounds.” and the village people listened to the old man, and the next day, they all wore red and played with the firecrackers – “boom boom boom.” And the Nian, very scared, went “ooooooohhh, no red no!” The village people were very happy, and the old man was very happy too. The end.” 

Context: This story was told to me in a group conversation setting after I had requested for any myths, legends, or tales to be told to me. The first teller is a Chinese American student, and she attributes her knowledge of the story to her education in Chinese school as a child. The second teller is a Malaysian student, and he does not attribute his knowledge of the story to any specific source other than just the experience of growing up in Malaysia, as well as the experience of being a lion dancer performer in Lunar New Year celebrations. 


Analysis: This story is a well known Chinese myth that explains the traditions of the Lunar New Year, which as aforementioned involves wearing red, making dumplings, and other noisy forms of celebration. The monstrous villain of the story – the Nian – is the same character for the Chinese word for year, hence it may be explained that the original conception of the year may have come from the cycle of destruction by the beast. There’s an interesting contrast to be drawn between each iteration of this story told by each teller, given their different environments for learning the story. The first teller, who had learned of the myth from a more formal, academic setting, had a more detailed, intricate telling of the story that called back to the involvement of divinity, and an overall more precise version of the sequence of events. The second teller, on the other hand, had a relatively more simple telling of the story, with more drama put into the actual procedure of telling the story. While the differences in style could certainly be attributed to the different personalities of each teller, the contrast in levels of formality and detail can also point to their different ways they learned of the story. For the first teller, the story of the Nian has to be precise and structured in a way that can be accepted in an academic setting, while the second teller does not have the same restrictions and instead may choose to focus on a remember the core point of the story more so than the sequence of details.

Filipino Mumu Anecdote

“One of the Filipino little folklore stories that parents like to tell their children is about a ghost called the mumu; it’s basically the Filipino version of the boogeyman. I had no idea what this was as a child, but one of my friends who had recently immigrated – very fresh off the boat – was a very skittish person and during class in like second grade we had a blackout and all the lights literally turned off – I think we were watching a video or something – and then basically it was completely dark which is different from what brown-outs are like in the Philippines. So essentially, he got scared, and he screamed out ‘It’s a mumu! It’s a mumu!” and everyone was laughing about that [including me] until I asked my mom about that.”

Context: The teller is a Filipino American student at USC. This story was told to me in a conversation after asking for any myths or legends that the student knew of. As the teller says in the text, this anecdote is from a moment during childhood, specifically during elementary school. 

Analysis: Based on brief research, the mumu is a common term used by Filipino children to refer to ghosts and similar supernatural beings. As the teller told me briefly, it was commonly used as a way for parents to scare children – the mumu is thus a sort of legendary being specific to the population of Filipino youth. This anecdote is not necessarily a specific recounting of a pre-existing narrative, nor can it be considered a true memorate given that the teller doesn’t necessarily use the story as enforcement for beliefs in the mumu, but I collected this story because I think it demonstrates an interesting difference between how different populations react to traditional legendary creatures, particularly in the context of the mainland versus the diaspora, and also demonstrates how children in a diaspora learn about legends of their culture. While the teller’s friend who had spent time in the Philippines had seemingly intimate knowledge of the mumu, the teller himself had no clue before asking his parents specifically because of this incident. This anecdote explains how knowledge of traditional folklore in diasporas can be affected and increased by processes like immigration of residents from the original mainland, and points to how diasporic populations, without these interactions, can grow apart from the original folklore due to a lack of communication of the folklore or a separation from the environment that the original folklore is found in.