Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

The Kukui Nut

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Host
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 3/24/2015
Primary Language: English

“I went to Hawaii this year for spring break. I learned that there’s a nut called a Kukui nut…I don’t think you can eat it…but you can polish it and make it into jewelry. It’s like…the size of an eyeball. But so supposedly the old fisherman in Hawaii use the oil to fish in more shallow water. If you put the nut in shallow water, the oil will like permeate the surface and supposedly the fish will get paralyzed and float to the top.”

Context/Analysis: The informant is not Hawaiian, but this folk belief is significant and memorable to him because of his recent trip to Hawaii. There, he immersed himself in the Hawaiian culture via food and traditions. When he was at a luau, he was given a Kukui nut lei by an old woman. He asked her what the material was, and she told him it was a nut with many purposes besides eating. She learned of its use for fishing from her grandfather, who was a fisherman in Hawaii. He took the lei back with him to his home in California. Though he does not believe that the nut can actually paralyze fish, he was intrigued by the myth. Ultimately, the myth of the KuKui nut is an heirloom that has been circulated within the fisherman community of Hawaii. It is now being told to tourists who are looking for an authentic Hawaiian experience, attending “authentic” luaus, and seeking Hawaiian mythology and storytelling.

 

Ash-Scattering Ceremonies

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Kailua-Kona, HI
Performance Date: 4/25/2015
Primary Language: English

“I think a lot of Hawaiians would rather be cremated than buried…Yeah. People would rather have their ashes scattered into the ocean. I think it’s a beautiful ceremony. I want to have my ashes scattered into the ocean. I think it’s the idea of being put back in nature. I guess that’s why people like it?…Anyway, I haven’t been to many, but I know that the main family members are the ones who cry the most. Like most funerals, they say a respectful prayer and scatter the ashes into the ocean. It’s just not really a solemn affair. More like just a goodbye.”

Context/Analysis: This ceremony is significant to the informant because it is part of her national identity. She would like to be cremated and scattered into the ocean just like her past family members. Most of her family members have been through the same ceremony, including her grandfather. She first learned of the ritual at her grandfather’s ash-scattering ceremony when she was younger.

It is compelling that Ash-Scattering ceremonies are not a sad affair. Most western burial traditions are incredibly sad and everyone wears black. People at ash scatterings don’t typically wear black. IN fact, it is a custom to just wear formal Hawaiian floral wear. Ultimately, it is a compelling tradition because it suggests that this tradition is more of a celebration of the life instead of a point of termination for the person.

 

White is a “Mourning Color”

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Cupertino, CA
Performance Date: 4/27/2015
Primary Language: Hindi (urdu)
Language: English, French, German, Spanish

“In India, we wear white to funerals. White is the color of barren soil. White is the color of dead things, ghost, sand. Infertile things that don’t grow anymore. For us black and red are very good color. Red soil is very iron-enriched because it’s good to grow stuff, and black soil is usually river soil so it’s very fertile. You can grow a lot of stuff in it…So for us red and black aren’t the mourning colors. The mourning color is just white. When people die they don’t turn black, they turn white. White isn’t even a color, it’s just color-less.”

The informant was not told of this custom from another individual, is it just a tradition that she grew up around. Growing up in India, the culture around her emphasized the color white as one of mourning or things without life. When she moved to America, she found it very strange that people wore black to Christian funerals. Black had a completely different meaning to her. This custom is significant to her because it makes more sense to her that white be a color of mourning. To the informant, black is a rich color. It is the color of hair, eyes, and clothing. To the informant, white has no color and symbolizes a blank slate. The point of dressing the deceased in white at an Indian funeral is to provide the soul with a blank slate in the afterlife.

 

 

 

 

 

The Music in the Woods

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beverly Hills, Massachusetts
Performance Date: 4/28/15
Primary Language: English

Informant: The informant here is an Irish Catholic girl from Beverly, Massachusetts, a small town made out of the original Salem settlement and as such a traditionally superstitious area.

Transcription:
The one that scared me the most when I was little and even now – my grandfather told me this – and apparently when he was a little kid, in my town, which is not Salem but was in the original settlement, there was a slew of child abductions. And all of the families told the police that they heard music outside their house that night. And they didn’t recognize the tune and they couldn’t tell where it was coming from. And so there were all these stories about fairies in the wood. And actual fairies are terrifying, they’d tell stories about them abducting people and replacing them with other people but anyways. As the story goes, these kids went missing and in the summer, you can still hear that music but now you can hear the voices of little children singing along. And when I was a kid I freaked out because I thought I could hear the voices too.
Where?
I heard that story my grandpa, who was born and raised in Beverly, Massachusetts.
Why did that stick with you?
Probably because he told it to me when I was a kid and I live in the woods that those stories all supposedly come from. When I was a little kid I thought that was gonna be me. And still I can’t drive through the roads – the only road – through those woods and I still have to keep my doors locked. I drive down this one street and I still get shivers sometimes. It’s a pretty old story, at least eighty or so years old.

Analysis: This story achieves its resonance through its unsettling nature. The image of children mysteriously vanishing is terrifying to both a guardian’s parental instincts and to a child’s sense of self-preservation. The reference to fairies – not in the modern, mass culture variety, but the original, more European fairies, who were oftentimes menacing figures – gives the story a darker mystery than a simple disappearance would. The nature of New England – shadowy, forested, and very, very old – causes scary stories such as these to be more naturally resonant than they would be anywhere else in the nation.

The Red Tide

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beverly Hills, Massachusetts
Performance Date: 4/28/15
Primary Language: English

Informant: The informant here is an Irish Catholic girl from Beverly, Massachusetts, a small town made out of the original Salem settlement and as such a traditionally superstitious area.

Transcription:

I’ll tell you about the Girl Scout leader. She’s kinda scary. Okay, so yeah, Salem, I’m from there. My Girl Scout leader, and her family, the Estes, were one of the big Salem families and they’re direct descendants of Rebecca Nurse, one of the witches who was killed. And supposedly if a woman has two different-colored eyes, then she was a witch, and a really powerful one. And my Girl Scout leader was probably like eighty-five and she had two different-colored eyes so everyone said “oh, there’s the witch” and she was actually so nice, we had no reason to assume she was a witch. And when she was really young, around my mom’s age, she had a baby and the baby pulled the TV down on himself and died and that night it was, I think the blizzard of ’78. Some blizzard in the seventies where a bunch of people died and it was that night or the next day. And when Mrs. Estes died at eighty-something and of natural causes, a red tide rolled in and it killed all of the seafood for several months. So witches. Natural energy. My mom was the one who told me all of this. And I guess the story was pretty common in my tiny little town amongst the townies, like the Estes are the witches, that’s just who they are. Kinda common in my town. Scary as hell.

Analysis:

Elements of the supernatural are a common trend in folklore, but rarely are they taken seriously. A major exception to this occurred in Salem, Massachusetts during Puritan times, in which nearly a dozen citizens were burned at the stake for suspicion of being witches. The area remained superstitious up to the modern day, with the later generations of these supposed “witches” finding more mundane professions, like a Girl Scout leader. The idea that a person can be more in tune with the natural order things or possess some extranormal, occasionally malevolent, power pervades much folklore due to both the wish fulfillment nature of such stories and the element of fear that attaches to it. And when human events and greater climatological events coincide, one can never be truly certain that they’re just coincidence.