Category Archives: Folk speech

The Royal Toe

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: February 15, 2019
Primary Language: English

Context: My informant is a 22 year-old student of Italian descent. We were discussing a folk tale that she had heard while studying abroad in London in the prior year.

 

Background: My informant expressed that she was unaware of how the tale or myth began, but it was one that she heard on several occasions. There are many different myths regarding what the different length of fingers or toes mean, but this one in particular involves the royal family.

 

Main Piece: “The myth is, if your second toe is longer than your big toe, you come from a royal bloodline. There was a similar one that said you were related to Princess Diana specifically. I was sitting at dinner with a few friends one night, and one girl was wearing open toed shoes. She had this special toe apparently, and our waiter pointed it out and told her it meant that she comes from the bloodline of the royal family. I just thought it was kind of strange, so a few of the times that I was in a conversation with a local I asked them about it and all said the same thing. I couldn’t tell if anyone really truly believed it, but everyone definitely knew about it.”

 

Analysis: I had never heard of the myth of the Royal Toe, so after doing some research I learned that many famous statues exhibit the “royal toe” as well – one famous example being the Statue of Liberty. It’s interesting to see the different symbolic meaning identified to the length of a digit, and how it’s manifested in different cultures and countries.

 

The Watchung Reservoir

Nationality: American
Age: 66
Occupation: Musician
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 20, 2019
Primary Language: English

The Watchung Reservoir

The following informant is a 66 year-old man who was born and brought up in New Jersey. Here, they are describing a local urban legend that they had heard throughout their upbringing; they will be identified as R.

R: The Watchung reservoir, off of Route 22, going west in New Jersey. At nighttime, we’d drive up there, and it was a dark two-lane, windy road, and there was one stretch, I forget what they used to call it, but rumour has it, and I actually did this once, where you drive in, and the road, you stop in this one part of the road, and it appears to be going uphill — you put the car in neutral, and the car keeps going uphill.

So, the story goes, one night, a couple of, the guy and his date, they were going up there, and he was showing it to her, put the car in neutral, and it started to go uphill, and she got so freaked out that she jumped out of the car, and he jumped out after her, and the next morning they were both found hanging from a tree. That’s what happens in Watchung…

Context

This interaction took place at a family gathering for a friend that I had been invited to; the informant is the father of the friend who invited me along. This performance took place with the informant’s girlfriend listening and occasionally laughing or expressing surprise and disbelief of the story. Having an audience most likely aided in the particular delivery of this legend, as everything led to the final cadence (almost as if to add shock).

My Thoughts

I tried looking up this particular urban legend online, but without luck (this is not to say that I disbelieve the informant). There is a plethora of additional paranormal sightings, interactions, and legends. While there does seem to be an actual Watchung reservoir, the Watchung Reservation yields many more results online — perhaps this is what the informant was referring to.

The bounding borough of Mountainside is a hotspot for these stories, including rumors of witchcraft and satanism. In this regard, this legend, whether the result of countless retellings of a rumor, or an actual optical illusion affected by the location’s “haunted nature,” makes sense.

 

A Polish Wedding Joke

Nationality: American, Polish ancestry
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Reno, Nevada
Performance Date: 3/24/19
Primary Language: English

Main Piece

QJ: “Can it be a dirty joke?”

Collector: “Yes.”

QJ: “A lot of the jokes I grew up with are kind of dirty…most Polish ones are…I think one that my grandfather would say asks what is long and hard that a Polish bride gets on her wedding night?”

Collector: “What?”

QJ: “A new last name.”

Analysis

This joke seems to be fairly popular among Polish people, and I have heard it beyond my informant. In fact, I have heard it outside of the realm of Polish culture, and have seen different ethnic backgrounds attached to it. It seems that many prideful Slavic people make light of their often long and hard to pronounce last names through jokes like these. Given my informant’s background for the joke and explaining that he heard ones like these growing up, I would also assume that his culture and family have more of an openness to tell dirty jokes in front of younger audience. Generally, it would seem that older people have more of a relaxed ability to tell jokes that otherwise would not seem appropriate. This joke also implies a patriarchal society, where a woman would receive something from her husband in any interpretation of the joke, but no jokes suggest the woman giving the man anything.

 

Puerto Rican Witches Getting Married

Nationality: Dominican American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 2/21/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Description

“In Puerto Rico, they say a witch is getting married.”

Context

I was sitting with a few informants as we all discussed our cultures and our different belief systems. After one informant randomly offered their thoughts on what the Persians believe about rain when the sun shines, this informant gave me this tidbit of information. She went on further to explain that the origins of the belief are unclear, but that whenever it rained while the sun was shining, she had clear memories of her mother pointing at the sky and saying it.

Analysis

I found it interesting that I had two different people from two different cultures reflecting on this belief that there had to be something happening because it was raining and sunny at the same time. The closest thing I remember believing is that after a rain, or if there was a rainbow while it was still raining, there was a little leprechaun and a pot of gold at the end of it. My friends would make jokes about God peeing onto Earth, of course, but that was the most of it. I love that different cultures have different explanations, but I cannot begin to think what witches and rain and sun have to do with each other.

 

A Plane Crash Riddle

Nationality: American
Age: 11
Occupation: N/A
Residence: Camarillo, California
Performance Date: 03/24/19
Primary Language: English

Main Text:

JM: “There was a plane crash. Every single person died, who survived? The answer would be every married couple because every single person died.”

Context: 

This riddle was collected from my 11 year old sister who is currently in fifth grade and about to go to middle school. When I asked her where or when she would tell a riddle/joke like this, she told me that she would usually tell it to her friends on the playground at recess. I also asked her if it was every common for her to tell jokes or riddles in the classroom and she responded that she usually does not because then the teacher would get mad because it is teaching time and not play time.

Analysis:

One reason that children are passing along a riddle with such content can be explained by analyzing the environment that children are faced with at school. In elementary school all the way up to high school, many young kids and young adults are preoccupied with finding a boyfriend or girlfriend and all of the adolescent urges that are associated with this. The riddle plays off of the idea of there being a difference people single people and married people and for this to be a topic of discussion amongst young people is not really surprising. As said in chapter 5 of the book Folk Groups and Folklore Genres An Introduction, Jay Mechling says that people, especially children make jokes or base their folklore off of things that it has been taboo for them to talk about. Kids around 11 years of age are entering puberty and exploring new things about their body that come with puberty. In other words, one reason that this riddle is being passed around by 11 year olds and other kids in elementary school is that it takes about relationship status which kids themselves find as a constant preoccupation at school which is treated as taboo by most parents. It is also important to note that this riddle was collected from an 11 year old fifth grader who understand that this riddle is an example of a play-on-words and this kind of riddle would probably not be passed around by younger children due to its complexity.

Another main part of this riddle that can be analyzed is its focus on dark humor. Although the answer to the riddle has more to do with the play-on-words than on the subject of the plan crash itself, it is important to analyze why a plane crash would be the plot in the riddle in the first place. According to Peter Narvaez, the author of Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture, many jokes and riddles are made to be dark humor. This means that the plot of the jokes and riddles are centered around many dark aspects of life like genocides, death, rape etc as a means to act as a release to those telling the jokes. People have been made to believe that they can not talk about dark experiences or occurrences, so as sort of a way to fight this oppression of speech per se, these jokes are created.

Coupled together, these analyses produce the idea that this joke was created and told among children as a way as addressing the topics that children have been made to believe that they are unable to talk about as well as a release of people’s beliefs on some things that are considered ‘dark’ in the form of humor. These forbidden topics hidden in the form of a joke/riddle allow this riddle and people to continue addressing these oppressed needs without repercussion from adults or other individuals, allowing the riddle to survive and continued to be told hopefully for years to come.