Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Athanasios Diakos

Story: My great, great grandfather, George, was born in the village Athanasios Diakos – I have no idea how to spell that, you can look it up later. The village, Athanasios Diakos, was named after a very famous Greek war hero in the war against the Ottoman Empire – who had invaded Greece and had been occ- *coughs* – occupying it for almost 400 years by that time. He fought heroic battles against them with a very small group of freedom fighters, until he got captured captured them them. He was impaled and burnt to death on a spit. When he was captured, he was offered a chance to live and be made an officer in the Ottoman army but he had to denounce his Christianity and converting to Islam! Instead he said: “I was born a Greek, I will die a Greek”!*informant yells and lifts fist* His brutal death is said to have been the rallying point for all Greeks who fought tooth and nail against the Ottoman army and, although vastly outnumbered, ended up driving them out of the country.

Format: The informant told these to me in person, and I recorded them to better transcribe them later.

Context: The informant was told these stories by his father, who was handed down these stories from his father, who was told some of these stories by his father. They are stories about the informant’s great great grandfather, George, and the village he is from. When asked about why this story is significant to them, the informant responded saying that this was told to them ‘hundreds of times’ over the course of their childhood. They would always ask for the story to be told before bed, and it was always a little bit different every time.

Analysis: This legend is super intriguing to me as a writer, because it is both a story about tragedy and victory. It has true roots in history, as Athanasios Diakos was in fact a Greek military commander during the Greek War of Independence. However, there are details in the story, like the manner in which he died, that I have not been able to find online.

Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ in Vietnamese Folklore

Main Piece:

AL: The tale of Lạc Long and Âu Cơ:

Lạc Long Quân was born in 2800 BC. He is the sun of a mountain god… and his mother is uh the sea god. His body is a dragon of some sort even though his parents… Was a sea dragon and his father the son of mountain… [He] was like a human-ish figure. His name, Lạc Long Quân, translates to Dragon Lord of Lạc. Lạc is a place in Vietnam…

Âu Cơ is the daughter of the northern chief… And fairy from the mother… Lạc Long Quân, the dragon, decided to take the form of a handsome man because he has that power, and Âu Cơ is a fairy. And so they married, and um *laughs* interestingly enough, Lạc Long Quân married the daughter but killed the father. I know. It’s weird… You would think that you shouldn’t kill the daughter’s father…

Anyway, so they had sex, and uhm she gave birth to a sack of a hundred eggs, and they grew into a hundred boys… Or children, depending on lore, and reestablished Vietnam. Uhm they say that all ancestors descend form these 100 children… Âu Cơ loved the mountain, so she really liked the north side. Lạc Long Quân loved the water because his mother is a water dragon… And so they decided to split the kids in half, or not in half— *laughs* divide the kids in half, fifty-fifty, and take them to either location… Half of them in the mountain and half of them near the sea… It was agreed by both parents that they would help each other in need. Lạc Long taught his children to fish and tattoo. Âu Cơ taught her children to farm and breed animals.

In Saigon, there are two streets who intersect. One is named Lạc Long, and one is named Âu Cơ, and they intersect because they’re married to each other… It’s very cute… Probably intentional… And then Lạc Long is known as the first king of Vietnam…

Context:

Taken from a conversation with my roommate in the Cale & Irani Apartments at USC Village. Him and I are of Vietnamese descent.

Analysis:

Myths are like adult versions of fairy tales. Historically, they have helped societies try to understand elements of the natural world or the scientific phenomena around them. Here, this myth plays into patriotic ideals in the founding of a nation and a unification between the rivalry of North and South Vietnam. These cross-generational stories are kept alive by the communities performing them. These two figures are so deeply incorporated into Vietnamese culture that there’s many pieces of art dedicated to them. In fact, there is a temple dedicated to the Dragon Lord. Furthermore, the intersecting streets are just further proof of how stories like these unify people through their collective imagination, childhoods, and rich cultural histories and beliefs.

A Glitch in the Matrix – Sourceless Light

Nationality: Korean
Occupation: Dentist
Performance Date: 4/16/22
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

Context: J is my friend’s father, who works as a dentist. He claims this story happened to him a few years ago when he was in his mid 40s. The topic of living in the Matrix spurred this conversation.

Me: What if we were all living in the Matrix? What if none of this is real and we just respawn when we die?

J: I think you’re actually closer to the truth than you think.

Me: ?? What do you mean? You think we’re living in a matrix?

J: Well, I haven’t experienced anything disappearing or people “glitching”, but I have encountered a light with no source.

Me: Uhhhh what?

J: Ok story time. So I was driving on this highway in the Valley with a friend, right, and it was really late one night. Along the middle were these street lamps that made a pretty noticeable cone of light. Like, they did a good job of lighting up the streets.

Me: Mmhm, I see what you’re saying.

J: Anyways, they were pretty regular, and we didn’t really pay much attention to them. Then we saw a cone of light with no lamp to cast it. Looked EXACTLY like the light from the other street lamps, just being produced by empty air.

Me: That is sooo bizarre. Were you able to investigate it?

J: I wish we had. We easily could have, since there wasn’t anyone else on the road, but we just drove on. We still talk about it sometimes, but we’re still scratching our heads to this day.

Me: Noo I can’t believe you didn’t investigate! The curiosity would’ve killed me. Did you believe in the Matrix before this?

J: No, I didn’t really know that people actually believed in it. I just thought it was a movie. After seeing that, though, I looked into it more and was kind of surprised to find more stories like mine.

Me: Do you actually believe those stories now? That we could actually be living in a matrix?

J: Well, they’re certainly more believable now hahaa. If it wasn’t a “glitch”, I don’t know what it would be. Maybe our eyes were just tired but that was really quite strange.

Me: Wow, thank you so much for this story!

The concept of living in a simulation, or simulation hypothesis, is not new, with roots dating back to the ancient Greeks or Indian philosophers. However, the popularity of movies such as The Matrix and Inception brought the idea into the mainstream. Personally, I do not believe that we live in the Matrix, although stories like these are very intriguing, since they remind us that there are still so many things that we don’t understand about our universe. Though I have read stories about such “glitches” online, with the most popular ones being about surviving a supposedly fatal accident unscathed, this was my first time hearing about a glitch through someone that I know. It was definitely very confusing and left me with many questions about the world and what I have been taught. Although I have not experienced any glitches myself, hearing this story led me to become more open to other ways of interpreting the world.

Gnomes in Mexico

Background information: IJ is a 20-year-old student at USC, who currently lives in Los Angeles, CA. He often visits family members in Mexico, and learns about different types of folklore and traditions during his visits.

IJ: In my town in Mexico, people often see gnomes. Like in my house over there, we have a smaller room that’s disconnected across the main house and my cousin’s aunt stays there with her husband and her kids. And there was one time where she woke up in the middle of the night and saw her kid laughing and giggling, like standing up in his crib. And she saw the door open to outside, so she got a flashlight, because the light switch was like across the room from her and she switched on the flashlight and saw a small gnome there. He ran out the door into the cornfield behind our house. She stood there absolutely frozen, and like shell shocked and her kid started crying.

Me: Wow, that’s kind of scary! Have you ever seen a gnome when you stay at your house in Mexico?

IJ: No, but there’s been more sightings there of like little gnomes running around, like the real small gnomes with the hats (laughs). Except my aunt said this one looked more real like a doll and it had wide eyes when she flashed the light at it.

I think many people share pieces of folklore in which their child showed a greater sensitivity to something supernatural, and also often the child is more welcoming to it than adults might be. This adds an even more eerie feeling to stories like these, because it almost feels like children or babies are somehow more connected to these beings than us, as adults.

The House on Florentine Street

Background information: My mom is a second-generation Filipino-American, meaning she was born here in the US. Her parents immigrated from the Philippines when they were both relatively young, and my mom’s family grew up with a lot of relatives in San Francisco, CA. 

Mom: At my lola’s house in the city, on Florentine Street, they always told me that sometimes there would be an old man sitting in this one specific arm chair in their living room.

Me: Who was the old man?

Mom: No one knows who the old man was…but the house was very, very old, maybe he lived there before my lola and our family. He wasn’t ever harmful but they would just see him sitting there all the time. She told me he must have just stayed in the house after he passed, because it was still his. But he was never scary or bad, or anything like that.

Me: Did you ever see the old man yourself?

Mom: I don’t remember ever seeing him. But maybe sometimes I would feel his, like, presence or something similar. But nothing was ever bad about it.

In Filipino culture, many people are very respectful of the supernatural, and of spirits of the past that they may be intruding on. While, of course, the idea of ghosts is often very scary and unnerving in Western culture, my mom’s family and many other Filipinos/Filipino-Americans have more of a neutral view of ghosts from the past co-existing in the same space as living people. This mentality is seen in the way my family still showed respect and gave the old man his own space, while accepting the fact that he would continue to stay in the house.