Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Hitchhiking And Serial Killers In The U.S.

Nationality: American (Arizona)
Age: 22
Occupation: Aerospace Engineering Student
Residence: Tempe, Arizona
Performance Date: 4/10/2021
Primary Language: English

Informant’s Background:

My informant, DK, is a undergraduate student at Arizona State University studying aerospace engineering. He lives in Tempe, Arizona. His family is American and he was born and raised in Arizona, where he has lived his entire life.

Context:

My informant, DK, and I are friends, after meeting online through a mutual friend during the pandemic. I asked him if he had any folklore to share.

Performance:

DK: “Alright. Uhh… My middle-school math teacher, his name was (REDACTED), uh, very interesting guy. He fled home when he was 18, and I think he joined… he joined up with a traveling circus. (DK laughs). Like, I’m not making this up he legitimately joined a traveling circus. Uh, and then, at another point he decided to hitchhike across America. You know, hitchhike from point A to point B… uh, not really caring where he was going, you know… it’s the 70s. Uh, and so he is on the West Coast, in California during this time… And uh, he is hitching of course, like I said… and so he gets picked up by some guy, guy is giving him real creepy vibes. Just like a no-good dude kind of situation. Uh, and the guy keeps asking like creepy questions like… “Do you have any family? Do you live nearby?” Like that kind of stuff. And eventually my math teacher gets creeped out SO much the decides to bail from the car, literally like jumps out of the car while it is still rolling and runs away. And… you know, and normally that’s the end of the story except my math teacher saw on the news later that day, err…. The next day, actually, that there was a hitchhiker found who was found dead on the beach, uh, nearby where he was. And that… probably was the like same guy picking up another hitchhiker and killing him. And that that was like a serial killer who was doing that stuff so… that’s the story of my awesome math teacher who was almost killed by a serial killer when he was a young lad.

AT: “Ok, did you hear this from your math teacher?”

DK: “Yeah!”

AT: “Ok, what was the context in which he told you the story?”

DK: “Uh… It was math class. (DK laughs.) We didn’t have much to talk about at the time. He was a really neat dude, he had a lot of stories like that.”

AT: “Was it a known or a famous serial killer?”

DK: “I think it was, but… it… it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten which serial killer.”

Thoughts:
Serial killers have played a prominent role in American culture and folklore ever since the late twentieth century, if not earlier. While serial killings still occur in modern American society, the rise of mass shootings and other large-scale violence and killings such as the rise of domestic terrorism have in a way pushed serial killings and serial killers away from the limelight, and at least in the collective conscious they have become a almost quaint thing of the past. Television shows such as Netflix’s Mindhunter, or it’s various documentaries about real-life serial killers have propelled the murderers of the late twentieth century into the status of myths and legends. This particular story seems a perfect encapsulation of this kind of serial killer tale. The time period is the late twentieth century, with the setup of the story being that the informant’s teacher is hitchhiking, a phenomenon that has widely fallen out of practice as it is nowadays deemed “unsafe”, primarily because of stories such as this one. Popular American media is also full of such stories, such as in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where a group of hitchhikers find themselves at the mercy of a family of hillbilly serial killers. The scary and widely now considered relatively unsafe times of the late twentieth century in America lead themselves to all sorts of morbid tales, cults, serial killings, and the like were at the forefront of American cultural consciousness at the time, and as a result many such tales of the period, such as the one found in this article, have lasted to this day.

The Valge Laev (The White Ship) Of Estonia

Nationality: Estonian/Canadian
Age: 68
Occupation: University Professor
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Estonian

Informant’s Background:

The informant, in this case, is my mother, M, who was a first generation immigrant born to an Estonian family in the North-East of Canada. Her family had escaped from occupied Estonia, and had settled in Canada before she was born. She moved with my father to Los Angeles, in the United States, to take a job as a university professor. My brother and I were born a few years after.

Context:

I mentioned collecting folklore to my mother, who I regularly call on the phone now that I have moved out of our house, and she told me that she wanted to help. I told her yes, and she emailed me the following.

Performance (Written Over Email):

M: “This myth dates back to 1860 when a peasant preacher declared himself a prophet and called on his followers to leave Estonia to resettle in the Crimea in southern Russia. He went on ahead and promised that a white ship – the “Valge Laev” — would come to take them to this Promised Land. Several hundred families gathered on the beach to wait for the white ship, but it never came. Most Estonians were serfs, living under extremely harsh conditions, basically slavery, until 1811. Even after serfdom was abolished, life for the peasants was very hard, and there were several unsuccessful revolts against the German nobility who still owned most of the land. The White Ship was a symbol of hope, of escape to freedom and a better life.”

Informant’s Thoughts (Written Over Email):

M: “My mother was a young girl in Estonia during World War II, surviving two occupations, the first by the Red Army in 1940, the second by Nazi Germany, from 1941 to 1944. In the late summer of 1944, as Germany was losing the war and German troops were leaving Estonia, the “Soome Poisid” (“Finnish boys” – Estonians who had volunteered to fight with the Finns during the Winter War with the Soviet Union) came back to Estonia, ready to make a last stand for Estonian independence. My mother’s brother Rein was one of them. The situation was hopeless; the Red Army was closing in. But Estonians remembered that the British had come to their aid during the War of Independence (1918-1920). And so the myth of the White Ship returned.”

Thoughts:

I think this myth makes total sense given Estonia’s troubled history. The frequent invasions and occupations by foreign forces throughout Estonian history have no doubt led to many myths and tales created with the intention of spreading hope of freedom for the Estonian people. The fact that this myth was able to survive and be retold a century later speaks to Estonia’s dependence on folklore as a means of maintaining its cultural identity, and to the need for hope and resilience during it’s many occupations.

Grogh – Armenian Pagan Spirit and Curse Word

Nationality: Armenian/Armerican
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian

Informant’s Background:

My informant, AD, is an undergraduate student at USC who grew up in Glendale, California. Her family immigrated to the United States from the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Context:

The informant is my girlfriend and we share an apartment together. I asked her if she could share some Armenian folklore with me, and this is one of the pieces that she provided.

Performance:

AD: “There’s this thing in Armenian that it’s like a pretty common curse that people will say, like my mom says it a lot when she gets angry and stuff, uhm, or like… uhm like y’know something bad happens or whatever. It’s “grogh”, right? And there’s different ways to say it, there’s like “groghi tsotsu” or “groghu kez tani”. Uhm, so “grogh” means “writer”, so when you say that word you are refferring to an old pagan Armenian spirit, the Grogh, who was like a scribe that I think traditionally uh, had the names of people who would ever be born and who were going to die, like their lifespans in a book, so he was a symbol of death right? And he would take people when they died. He was basically an Armenian pagan form of the grim reaper. Uhm, so when people say “grogh” or “groghu kez tani”, that means “let the scribe take you” or “groghi tsotsu” that means “in the arms of the scribe”. So yeah.”

Informant’s Thoughts:

AD: “It’s strange. Like I guess, I dunno, it’s like a common word, it’s like the equivalent of being like “damn”, but it’s like so specific, and like it’s not like “grogh” is also not used in vernacular, it also just means “writer”, like it’s a common word, so it’s strange that it also is a curse.”

Thoughts:

I think that this word “grogh” is very similar to the English “damn” in many ways. It’s used in pretty much the same contexts, with the use of the word singularly being often an expression of frustration, or with more words being added to transform it into an insult such as “groghu kez tani” meaning “let the scribe take you” being very similar to the English “damn you to hell”. I think that the etymology of the word itself, originating as the name of a spirit or deity in Armenian paganism and over time becoming a word that simply means “writer” makes sense when compared with other examples of words with similar etymological origins, such as “atlas”, which now just refers to a map but once referred to the titan that held up the sky. 

Chinese Legend about Zeng Zi

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Jose, California
Performance Date: 04/20/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin, Spanish

Context: I heard this legend from my friend (AL) in one of our calls where I asked him about Chinese tales and legends. This is one of the three stories that he told me. 

Story: 

AL: “I think I heard this one from my Chinese teacher, but it also could have been from my grandparents who I was living with at the time. Do you know who Zeng Zi is?

Me: “Never heard of him, really.”

AL: “What about Confucious.”

Me: “Yea he’s that Chinese philosopher dude.”

AL: “Yeee. Zeng Zi was kinda like his disciple, and he was a very respectable and honest person. So one day, Zeng Zi’s wife was going to the market, and his son wanted to go to the market, too. Zeng Zi’s wife was in a hurry and didn’t want to bring her son along, so she told him to stay home. Her son started throwing a tantrum, so the mother told him that if he stayed home, she would kill a pig later so that they could have pork for dinner. I’m pretty sure that back then, pork and other good meat were only really eaten over holidays or special occasions, so the son was excited and agreed to stay home. Zeng Zi’s wife had no intention of killing a pig of course and only lied to her son to make him behave. However, when Zeng Zi’s wife came home from the market that day, she saw Zeng Zi sharpening a knife and getting ready to kill a pig. Zeng Zi’s wife told him that she wasn’t serious and only told their son that they were going to have pork for dinner to make him behave. Zeng Zi sternly replied that parents should not teach their children to lie because children won’t listen to their parents if they lie. He said that if she had lied to their son, their son would think that it is okay to lie to others as well. Because of this, Zeng Zi killed the pig and the family had pork for dinner.”

Me: “Who do you think the legend is aimed towards?”

AL: “I would honestly say that it is applicable to everyone. It serves as a lesson to both adults and children to be careful with what they say. There’s also the idea that although children have to respect and listen to their parents, their parents also have to act responsibly.”

Thoughts: When I heard the legend, I also thought that it was a lesson aimed at everyone. I think that the legend demonstrates the Chinese values of honor and respect. I also did some further research and realized that in this legend and most Chinese legends, the name of women are seldom mentioned unless they are the main characters or supposed to be regarded as extremely beautiful. Although this specific story is a legend, this reinforces what we’ve learned in class about tales and stories being sexist because history is sexist.

The Archer and the Oil Merchant – Chinese Tale

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Jose, California
Performance Date: 04/20/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin, Spanish

Context: I call my best friend from high school (AL) almost every day. We are really close since we are both going to the same college and share many interests. I collected this tale from one of our calls when I asked him if he knew any Chinese tales. 

Story: 

AL: “This tale is one that my mom used to tell me all the time when I was young. There once was a very famous archer in China, who could consistently land nine out of ten shots on target. His skill with the bow drew the attention of the emperor, who was very impressed and made him a high-ranking General. People would come to see him practice all the time, and the crowd would clap and cheer him on. One day, he noticed that an old oil merchant did not cheer or clap for him, and was the only one that remained indifferent in the crowd. Curious and a little insulted, he confronted the old man and asked him why he did not clap for him and find his skills impressive. The old man replied and said that there was nothing very impressive about the archer’s skills. To prove his point, the old man brought out a Calabash and placed a copper coin over it, aligning the hole of the gourd with the hole in the center of the coin. He began to pour a whole jar of oil into the Cabalash without spilling a single drop. The archer was impressed and humbled, and the oil merchant said that there was nothing impressive about the skills gained from hard work because every person is able to work hard.”

Background: My friend heard this story from his mom, who used it to tell him that everyone works hard and that there will always be someone out there who is more skilled than you are. My friend thinks of the tale as a reminder to stay modest and uses it to remind himself that anything can be achieved if he works hard. The Cabalash is a Chinese gourd that has a very small opening, and Ancient Chinese copper coins had a hole in the middle, so the part about the old man serves to show that he is just as skilled, if not more skilled, than the archer.

Thoughts: I thought the lesson that the tale aims to teach was very similar to other Chinese stories. One example can be seen from the legend my mom told me about Li Bai where he sees an old woman grinding a metal rod into a sewing needle, and learns the lesson of anything being possible through perseverance. This also offers insight into Chinese values as traditionally they believe that being hardworking is something that everyone should strive towards.