Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Ruprecht

Nationality: Chinese/German American
Age: 29
Occupation: Advertising
Residence: Boston, MA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English

In Germany, there is Santa (Saint Nicholas) and then they have Ruprecht. Ruprecht is kind of like Santa’s henchman, and he physically reprimands naughty kids, just as Santa rewards good kids with toys or candy (or in Germany, oranges and coins in your shoes).

My informant tells me: “When my mom was little, one of her older brothers was very naughty, so on Christmas morning, the doorbell rang, and then Ruprecht came and took her brother away in a burlap sack, kicking and screaming. Ever since, my mom was terrified, and physically sick to her stomach, every Christmas, living in fear that Ruprecht would come and beat the shit out of her. Long story short, we’re thinking of introducing the folklore of “Ruprecht” into our house. [My informant is the mother of two small children.] Time outs are not as effective as one might hope they’d be.”

The Easter Bunny

Nationality: American (British Descent)
Age: 56
Occupation: CFO
Residence: Del Mar, CA
Performance Date: April 26, 2012
Primary Language: English

“The Easter Bunny coming and leaving eggs, hiding eggs around the house. So, when the kids woke up in the morning they’d, uh, find Easter eggs.”

 

“So yours were in the house?”

 

“Yes. It was in the house. It wasn’t like we did up at Yosemite and stuff. We changed it cuz when we went camping at Yosemite, we changed it to hide the eggs around the forest, or the trees and stuff when we were camping.”

 

“I sure hope you guys counted the number of eggs you hid in your house cuz you’d be finding something smelly later.”

 

“Well or the dogs would find them.”

 

“And then there was, uh, the time when we had done the camping and Yosemite and Easter egg hunts so many times that one year it was raining so hard that we left, and you were concerned that the Easter Bunny would never be able to find us. Cuz we weren’t in Yosemite. which was kind of funny.”

 

“ And then you did them in the, or what was it, in the hotel?”

 

“Yeah, we stayed at a hotel and I went out out, and colored eggs and we hid them all over the hotel room and in your bed and everywhere.”

 

 

Easter, a very religious, Christian holiday, follows a different path for some, particularly in our more secular, commercialized American culture. It’s all about the bunny, Peeps, and chocolate. And, personally, the family tradition of camping in Yosemite and searching for decorated eggs has always been a highlight of my year. Perhaps it neglects the original, truer origins of the holiday, but at least it will never be forgotten in one way at least.

 

 

The Easter Bunny, and basically everything else that has to do with the holiday, painted eggs, Peeps, deviled eggs, jelly beans, is so far removed from the original Christian roots of the holiday. But nonetheless the holiday and at least some of the traditions have survived the centuries in one way or another. Only time will tell what may become of them.

Annotated Piece 1 – William Wallace in the Movie Braveheart

Nationality: American
Age: Released in 1995
Primary Language: English

The following post is a brief analysis of folklore’s presence in the film Braveheart. It contains several key quotes and examples that indicate how this film showcases the oral tradition of Medieval Scotland.

 

The movie Braveheart, directed by and starring Mel Gibson, could not have been created without the aid of folkloric descriptions of William Wallace. The movie even contains clear examples of how our understanding of the great hero has been shaped by oral tradition.

Gibson chose to insert several examples of this in action in the heart of the movie. While rallying his troops prior to the movie’s depiction of the Battle of Stirling, a peasant soldier challenges Wallace, accusing him of being a fraud, for, “William Wallace is 7 feet tall.” In response, Wallace replies, “Yes, I’ve heard, he kills men by the hundreds. If he were here, he’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightening from his arse” (Gibson, Braveheart).

Later in the film, the audience sees several instances of these exaggerations connected into one montage. The first scene shows an old man speaking to an assembled group around a fire.

He says to them, “William Wallace killed fifty men, fifty, as if it was one”.  The movie then cuts to another scene where a man is speaking earnestly to another across a tavern’s table.

He says, “Wallace killed 100 men, cut through them like Moses through the Red Sea”

These subtle dialogues may not bear significance beyond its humor to the casual viewer, but to an analyst of Folklore, it demonstrates clearly what was occurring all across the Scottish countryside at that time. Wallace was moving from man to myth. This myth is what we see portrayed in Braveheart, and it is what has been canonized into an essential component of Scottish culture.

Taiwanese Superstition – Dreams About Losing Teeth

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 1/28/12

My friend friend from home is of Taiwanese descent. She is insanely OCD about her teeth, and brushes them 5 times a day. I too am pretty concerned with my oral health, and after being friends for a few months, she began to pick up on it.

One day while we were chatting, I mentioned that the night before I had had a terrible dream about losing my teeth- not just one or two, but all of my teeth in a car accident. She stared at me and said, “that’s funny, my Dad would be really upset if I told him my boyfriend had such a dream”. She went on to explain,  “My Dad always told me that having dreams about losing teeth is extremely bad luck. He advised me to avoid people who have these dreams.”

It is interesting to contemplate the origins of this Taiwanese superstition. My friend had not read it anywhere, and neither had her father. Therefore, both had been informed of the superstition through the oral performances of others. Perhaps this superstition was originally created to stifle vanity? Or maybe it is a result of a more complicated cultural matrix of superstitions that combine around the pair of teeth and dreams.

Words of Wisdom From The Chef

Nationality: Jamaican
Age: 38
Occupation: Chef
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 2/20/12
Primary Language: English

My fraternity’s chef is Jamaican, and always tells us to “eat your eggs before your toast, and you will be strong.”

Before taking this class, I didn’t think much of him saying this. Since last August when we first hired him as our chef, he has repeated this phrase without fail every time he has served us eggs and toast. After the first few weeks of taking this class, I realized that what he was saying might in fact be a Jamaican proverb. I asked him one morning, and sure enough, he had learned it from his mother while growing up in Jamaica. According to our chef, she would always serve him eggs and toast at the same time, but instructed him never to eat the toast before the eggs.

When contemplating the reason for this tradition, two possible explanations come to mind. First, our chef claims that his mother believes bad luck follows those who eat toast before eggs. This is not a scientific statement, but nevertheless carries weight in Jamaican culture.

The second possible explanation is biological. Before the benefits of modern medicine, trial and error was usually the best method of medical testing. Perhaps after hundreds of years of eating certain combinations of foods, Jamaicans began to notice that when they ate eggs before their bread, they became physically stronger. There is a biological explanation for this phenomenon. Eggs are one of the most protein-rich foods available on Jamaica. Protein takes a longer time to digest than bread, which is primarily comprised of carbohydrates. Protein is much more closely tied to strength than carbohydrates. If the body is given more “alone-time” with the substance that is harder to break down, is it not possible that physical performance would increase as a result- especially if this substance is closely tied to muscle recovery?

It is interesting to contemplate the reasons for this proverb’s origin. The reality is that it most likely originated from a combination of  both the aforementioned factors, in addition to other societal and cultural influences.