Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Armenian Folk Story: The Golden-Headed Fish

This piece was told to me by one of my neighbors of Armenian descent. I came home one night to find my neighbors having a celebration to honor those who had died during the Armenian genocide from 1914 to 1923. Around the last few weeks of April, it is apparently a tradition to celebrate Armenian pride in honor of those who were killed. I was curious to hear more about the culture and took the opportunity to ask about some stories of Armenian folklore. I found myself talking to one of the older gentleman at the party, who was the uncle of my neighbor who lived at the house. He was very happy to indulge my curiosity about Armenian folklore and told one of his favorite stories about a fish with a golden head. It was definitely a story that many at the party had heard before, because many of them chimed in, laughing at certain parts and commenting on others.

The story he told was about “an old Egyptian king who went blind and was expected to die.” Physician after physician was brought in to see if they could help the “old king,” as my informant continued to call him. Apparently, one of them claimed that there was a fish with a golden head somewhere in the ocean that could provide a cure if caught. The physician said he would wait for 100 days to see if the fish could be caught, so the “old king’s” young princely son brought many men with him to find the fish. However, “after many and many fish were caught, they thought they would never find the one with the golden head.” Just at the 100 days, the young prince caught the golden fish, but at that point it was too late because the physician said he was going to leave. At that moment, the fish also looked up at him, scared for its life. Since the prince new that the special cure was only the secret of the one physicians, he decided to let the fish live. When the king heard what his son had done, he summoned an executioner. However, the queen intervened and rescued her son, and gave him the advice to take on servants who served out of charity and not money. This servant introduced the prince to another king who offered them the prize of his daughter if they could kill a monster. However, the princess was actually a monster herself that was looking to eat the prince, but the prince’s servant cut off her head and the prince was “married to another of the king’s daughters—he had many.” That night, the prince heard that his father had died and so he returned to Egypt. The servant then told the new king that he must go, but the young king was upset because he had saved his life. It was then that the servant revealed he was actually the fish with the gold head, who had come in human form to save the life of the young prince in gratitude for his kindness earlier on.

The story itself is an interesting one. I admit, it was a little long and confusing, but that might have also been because the informant had been drinking throughout the party. Still, there is a clear moral message that I find shares a theme with other folk stories from other cultures. It promotes acts of kindness and benevolence, for these behaviors will help ensure that others will be kind to you. I also found it interesting that the story was set in Egypt and the Middle East, which is quite far from Armenia. I asked the informant if he knew where the story came from and he said it had always been told in Armenia. This may have been brought to the region by foreigners, or the story was just set in a seemingly far-off and mysterious place to add to the excitement.

Source: Garen Bedrossian

Song: “Johnny Appleseed”

In my search for music that connected with American folk stories, I found a 2001 song written and recorded by Joe Strummer called “Johnny Appleseed.” The song was recorded by Sony Music and released by Universal on the album Global a Go-Go. It is a pretty catchy song that uses a guitar riff and keyboard as its main instruments to set the melody. Then, Strummer comes in with an acoustic guitar, which makes it feel much more authentic as a folk song because it is reminiscent of earlier blue grass music that often-used themes associated with folk tales. The lyrics are as follows:

Lord, there goes Johnny Appleseed/

He might pass by in the hour of need/

There’s a lot of souls/

Ain’t drinking from the well locked in a factory.

 

Chorus:

Hey, look there goes/

Hey, look there goes/

If you’re after getting the honey, hey/

Then you don’t go killing all the bees.

 

Lord, there goes Martin Luther King/

Notice how the door closes when the chimes of freedom ring/

I hear what you’re saying, I hear what he’s saying/

Is what was true now no longer so.

 

Chorus

 

What the people are saying/

And we know every road, go, go/

What the people are saying/

There ain’t no berries on the trees/

Let the summertime sun/

(Fall on the apple) Fall on the apple.

 

Lord, there goes a Buick forty-nine/

Black sheep of the angels riding, riding down the line/

We think there is a soul, we don’t know/

That soul is hard to find.

 

Chorus

 

Hey, it’s what the people are saying/

It’s what the people are saying/

Hey, there ain’t no berries on the trees/

Hey, that’s what the people are saying, no berries on the trees/

You’re checking out the honey, baby/

You had to go killin’ all the bees.

 

Johnny Appleseed is only mentioned in the first stanza of the song, but it aims to set a foundation for discussing other major figures that are associated with kindness and giving, like Martin Luther King. Overall, the song clearly uses the Johnny Appleseed reference as a way to comment against global warming and the polluting the environment. Appleseed is a figure who brought apple seeds to the Northeast, therefore helping provide a source of food and livelihood to poor farmers. He represents an agricultural entrepreneurship that was more in-tune and respectful of nature. Strummer contrasts this myth with the modern state of American society and its destructive forces on nature, like “killing all the bees.” It exposes how American society has changed for the worse and is polluting the natural environment that once served as a source of national pride.

Source: Strummer, Joe, “Johnny Appleseed.” Global a Go-Go. Sony Music. 2001.

 

 

Thai Folk Legend: Prince Sang Thong

I wanted to expand on the folklore explored in this collection beyond just American into other cultures. So, I asked one of my friends who is part Thai if she knew of any old folk tales that were from Thailand. Her mother was actually born in Thailand, and so my friend asked her about any folk tales she might know about. Her mother remembered the tale of the Prince named Sang Thong.

The folktale begins with a king who had two wives. One gave birth to a baby that lived inside of a crab shell, which prompted the King to banish his wife and their baby because of the child’s deformity. Interestingly, when the baby emerged from the shell he was a handsome boy with a golden body. Still, he was banished and worked as a servant after his mother smashed his shell “because of the jealousy of the other wife….she still wanted the prince dead because she had no son herself and his existence threatened her power.” My friend then explained how this went on for several years, and “Prince Sang Thong nearly forgot about his true status as a prince […] until one day the other wife tried to kill him after finding where he was.” This prompted he prince to leave his home and take shelter with a woman my friend called “the big lady.” When I asked her about this, she did not have much of an explanation because her mother did not go into detail about this “big lady.” Apparently, the lady had a magic well that she forbade the prince to go near. His curiosity was too strong, so he went to go into it, but decided to disguise himself by wearing ratty old clothes and an ugly mask. He found inside the well a magic kingdom and a princess who saw past his mask and wanted to marry him. Her father “said absolutely not because he is poor and hideous looking.” But the disguised Sang Thong continued to pass every test her father gave him, no matter how impossible. Eventually, the King reluctantly approved the marriage, and Sang Thong removed his mask and revealed his royal status as a prince without a kingdom. He was then embraced by the King and finally accepted.

I saw this folk tale has having two morals built within its framework. On the one hand, it describes the benefits of persistence and having faith in oneself. Despite the prince’s deformity at birth, he did not let it hold him back. This is primarily because of his mother helping him by smashing the shell and allowing her son to have to learn how to live without hiding. The next moral is similar to the idea of don’t judge a book by its cover. The King and his servants discriminated against Sang Thong because of his looks, but in reality, he was a handsome and magical prince with a royal lineage. Thus, it aims to discuss how people should not judge others on their looks or first impressions. Unfortunately, I felt that some of the performance aspect was removed because it was filtered through a third-party. I tried to hear the tale from my friend’s mother, but our schedules never worked out for a meeting. Moreover, my friend recounted the tale over the phone to me, which I also feel took out some of the performance aspect to it.

Source: Tian Reynolds

 

Scary Story

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/10/18
Primary Language: English

Madison: “Have you ever heard the story about the dog”

Me: “No…what is it?”

Madison: “So there was this woman that, uh, was blind and deaf and lived alone but she had a dog that would help her do things… like a service dog. They like had a great system going and the biggest part of their relationship was that she really depended on him for her comfort and safety in her way of life. If she felt uncomfortable and needed assurance she would stick her hand out and the dog would lick once if everything was okay and twice if there was something wrong. Actually… think she was just blind and not deaf, or maybe she was? I don’t know…but it’s okay. So one night, she went to sleep and she put her hand out like she did every night to make sure everything was good and the dog licked once. She woke up in the middle of the night because she felt movement so she stuck her hand out and the dog licked her once again so she thought everything was okay. However, the next morning when the dog didn’t retrieve the paper form the mailman she thought something was wrong because that was something he did every morning—which is funny now that I think about it because why would she need a paper. So anyways…we’re getting to the good part…she called the cops and they went to her apartment and she and the dog had been brutally murdered. On the wall in her blood wrote ‘humans can lick too.’”

 

Background: Madison is a twenty-year old female born and raised in Malibu, CA. She is currently a sophomore at USC.

Context: Madison is my roommate, and she told me this story one night while we were doing homework in our living room. Somehow, the topic of scary stories came up and she shared that one.

Analysis: Scary stories were a big part of my childhood and were always brought up at sleepovers and camps during my middle school years. I liked to believe they didn’t ever affect me, although the truly scary ones really did; I find the ability of scary stories to affect people emotionally really interesting since we typically don’t have any sort of legitimate evidence that the story is at all true. I’ve grown up with Madison, so hearing her share a scary story now that we’re older immediately brought me back to the sleepovers we had as kids and the scary stories everyone used to tell. It is an intriguing cultural characteristic to analyze that we enjoy hearing and sharing scary stories, and I am curious to investigate when this specific element of folklore began and how it manifests in different cultures around the world.

Devil’s Trail

Nationality: United States
Age: 54
Occupation: Substitute Teacher
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 3/24/2018
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

 

The following was recorded from the Participant. They are marked as LG. I am marked as DG.

 

LG: Up around JPL and La Cañada, um there’s different times, even the Indians thought that there were demons, although they didn’t call them that, they called them negative spirits, but because that was known, there was some big name scientists that started an occult up there, and they would have satanic ritual sup there, and there’s a place called the Devils Trail up there. And they would-in fact up in the 50s, a few children disappeared up there in that area, I mean they were running up the trail with their parents, they turned the corner, and they never saw those kids again. Yeah it’s not even really a great trail now, there’s just something funky about it. But um when we went up there hiking that one time up there, and Dad was throwing his knives at the trees, this sort of blood looking stuff was coming out of them. And to this day, I have never ever seen that in any other tree. And I looked it up! I can’t find it. Now Danny [the interviewee’s brother] said he found it but I looked and I can’t find it. So to this day that is not a trail I want to ever go on again.”

 

DG: Where did you hear this from?

 

LG: I’ve heard the Devils Trail from a lot of people, I’ve seen it on the internet, heard it from different people, including my mom, and seen it on TV. It’s kind of like one of those-it’s a warning, but I think it’s also like a lot of the time like egging people to go onto it. But I think it’s mostly like a warning, to parents like don’t let your kids go on there. But they’ve had like um a couple teenagers disappear in that area too. Yeah don’t go there.”

 

Context:

 

The conversation was recorded while sitting on a patio in Glendora, CA. The sun is setting and a group of us are sitting around all sharing folklore. The context for the tale is to be told to your children, mostly in the JPL/La Cañada area, to warn them about going out on the trails alone.

 

Background:

 

The interviewee is a 54-year-old mother of two, who is married. She grew up in Los Angeles, before moving around, and finally ending up back in Los Angeles. Her and her parents had a very tight-knit relationship, and she comes from a religious background.

 

Analysis:

 

This story has one of the marks of a folktale, in how it is most often used to warn young children about the area. Interestingly enough, LG has also heard of it in the context of “egging” on other children to do it. This is a very local tale. Someone from New York would not understand what the Devil’s Trail meant, except maybe in the context of a different trail. Having been on this trail myself, I can attest to how terrifying it can become. My own experience was that the trail suddenly became dark and freezing, during the middle of the day. This folktale is also interesting in that aspect, as it shows that many people can have different experiences of the same item.