Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

The Brother Sun and The Sister Moon

Nationality: Congolese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2017
Primary Language: English

I had lunch with a good friend on Sunday. During the lunch, he told me three legends. Here is the third:

“Once upon a time there was a widow who had a set of twins, a boy and a girl. Everybody mistreated the widow because she had the children out of wedlock with a man nobody knew. Everybody pushed them away into the forest, where the mother made a nest for her and her children. Seldom did the villagers know that the children had gifts. The baby boy had the sun on his forehead and the girl had the moon on her forehead. Every time the mother went back into the village she would be harassed by the villagers until she found someone nice enough to give her what it was she needed, usually food. One day the village’s electricity was destroyed because of a recent storm that had passed through. After three weeks without electricity the villagers realized that they needed light in order to function, during the nighttime. One night somebody from the village realized that there was a bright light shining from the forest, he gathered everyone and together they followed the direction the light was coming from. They realized that the light was coming from the foreheads of the two children and ran into the widow before they could reach them. All the villagers began to apologize for their cruelty towards the mother and begged for her forgiveness, so that they could get the light from her children. The mother forgave them and allowed them to use the light from her children, and the village continued to prosper.”

Collector Analysis:

My friend is not particularly fond of ‘The Brother Sun and The Sister Moon’. He says that it is his older sister’s favorite, so while they were growing up she would often request it before bed. Meanwhile, my friend would often request ‘The Turtle and the Prince’. While the latter legend was told best by his mother, ‘The Brother Sun and The Sister Moon’ is, and remains best told by his grandmother. My friend does not think very much of this legend. In fact, during our lunch he had trouble thinking of a third legend until he finally settled on this one.

I find this legend the hardest to follow of the three Congolese legends my friend told me. The message I take away from this legend is to be forgiving and to help others no matter what. The legend has a strong family oriented message because it is about a village prospering. Additionally, despite her mistreatment by the village, the widow forgives and allows her children to help them. I think this legend delivers an important message to children about forgiveness which is probably why the legend was so relevant during my friend’s childhood.

Bufeo Colorado

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 22, 2017
Primary Language: English

I sat in Leavey Library with my friend. I randomly asked her if she had any folklore she could share with me. At first, she said no. Then suddenly she said:

(My friend will be denoted C, I will be M)

C: “Actually I do! So, I was in the Amazon last summer for two weeks and our tour guide was super into the Amazonian culture and would tell us these crazy stories every day at lunch or dinner.”

M: “Do you remember any?”

C: “I remember one pretty well, but just because I thought it was so creepy. The other ones were pretty wild too but I don’t remember. But anyways, yeah so, in the Amazon they have pink dolphins. One of the pink dolphins the locals call ‘Bufeo Colorado’, what that means I could not tell you. So the story goes that Bufeo Colorado can shape-shift into a super attractive fisherman. Every night, his chirps can be heard at all hours of the night. When girls approach though all they see is the fisherman who tries to seduce the girls. If the girls agree to have sex, they immediately fall pregnant and will give birth to more pink dolphins. The only way to outsmart Bufeo Colorado is to play into his own game. The girl must accept the seduction but before Bufeo Colorado enters her home she must push him out the door. Once he falls, he turns back into a pink dolphin and will run away.”

Collector Analysis:

My friend learned this legend from her tour guide when she visited the Amazon rain forest. Apparently, her tour guide had spent years studying to people and culture of the Amazon.

I have never been introduced to the culture of the Amazon, so I am not very aware of what the culture consist of. However, from this legend alone it is clear to see that the Amazonian people have a distinct connection to nature, which is quite obvious when considering where they reside. Of course many Amazonian legends will have to do with the odd creatures only found in the Amazon rain forest. Additionally, I know that dolphins are intelligent animals and often interact with human, so its fascinating to see how legends form around these interactions. I want to know what occurred for the Amazonian people to put pink dolphins into a negative light. Overall, the Bufeo Colorado sounds similar to many other Salvadorean legends, except instead of being a spirit or demon (which is common in Salvadorean folklore) who is trying to seduce someone it is a magical animal.

Legend of Lokrum island

Nationality: Croatian
Age: 68
Occupation: retired
Residence: Dubrovnik, Croatia
Performance Date: 4/19/2017
Primary Language: Croatian

Legend of Lokrum island

NK is my grandmother who was born and raised in Dubrovnik, Croatia. Being a local she knows a lot about the city and its folklore. She first told me this story in elementary school right before I went to Lokrum for a school trip.

“Did you know that the island of Lokrum is haunted?”

 

No, why is it haunted?

 

“well to know why its haunted you have to know the history of the island. Once upon a time, a huge fire spread in Dubrovnik. The fire was so vast it posed a threat to the city and all the citizens in it. In desperation and sorrow, the people of Dubrovnik turned to prayers and promised to build a monastery if they survived. Suddenly the fire stopped. The citizens of Dubrovnik held its promise and built a Benedictine monastery on Lokrum. The monks took care of the island and, for centuries, have turned Lokrum into a paradise. But interest Lokrum aroused by Dubrovnik rich families who wanted the island all to themselves and their own personal benefit. These rich families drove the Benedictines of the island, but before they left the island, they cast a curse on Lokrum.”

 

What was the curse?

 

“After the holding the last mass on the island, right before they left they surrounded the island 3 times in the dark mysterious procession, the persons buried deep inside the hoods lit candles and held them upside down. During the procession, quietly repeated, “Damn everyone who gets Lokrum for personal enjoyment!” And so it was. From that that day on any one who owned Lokrum has died a mysterious death.”

 

After doing some research other versions are really similar and historically the story happened. All owners of the island did die in a mysterious death or had some big tragedy happen in their life. To this day no one owns the island, and I find it interesting how people still believe in the curse.

 

For another version of this story visit http://anavie.net/lokrum-the-cursed-island/

Stalked by Aliens

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Minnesota
Performance Date: April 25, 2017
Primary Language: English

(Actions/further descriptions, added by interviewer, are in parentheses.)

I had this one teacher in seventh grade, uh, my science teacher… and she was just a huge joke with the entire grade… and I guess all her other students, like, ever, because they… the general consensus was just that she was crazy, because… well, there’s a lot of reasons, actually, but… but the big one is, she’s, like, convinced that she’s being stalked by aliens. (Laughs.) Like, straight-up, dead serious convinced. And she told us this story once, about how she was stalked by aliens twice, and it was like… uh… it started off something like…

So she was, like, in her twenties or something, and she was driving alone, and she noticed that this one car had been following her for a while, so she… she pulls into this gas station and the other car just drives by. And she still waits there for a few minutes, like, just to be sure. Uh, but then once she’s back on the road, after a few minutes, she notices that the same car is still following her, so she, like, looks over at it, and she sees… she’s like, (in a mock Southern accent) “it was the strangest-looking man I ever saw!” (Laughs.) Um, so then she gets to her parents’ house, right? And the dude is still following her, so… uh, so she parks her car inside the garage, and then she goes out the back and knocks on her neighbor’s door and, like, asks if she can spend the night there, ’cause she would’ve been home alone at that point. Uh, so the neighbor lets her stay there, and the… the car, the dude’s car is just parked across the street from her house, and it’s there all night, and then, uh, finally, like, that night or the next morning or something, he’s gone, and she goes back home and everything is normal. But then, and this is, like, ten years later or something. Like, she’s moved to a different state, she’s gotten married, changed her name, she has a daughter, she drives a different car and everything… ten years later, she’s driving down the road, and she… and there’s this car that’s following her, right? And so she looks over and it’s the same car with the same guy in it, and it follows her all the way home, again! So she gets home, she locks all her doors, and runs to her daughter, and she’s, like, super agitated and, like, telling her daughter to hide under her bed and stuff, and then all of a sudden the doorbell rings, and she… You know those houses that have, like, the… the intercom things, where you, like, press a button and you can talk to… Yeah, so her house had that. So she, over the intercom, she goes (in a mock Southern accent), “What do you want?!” And he… So her house, her front door, there’s these, like, windows, uh, really narrow windows on either side of the door. So the dude, like, slaps a hand against each of those windows on either side, and, like, she still can’t see him, his face or anything, like, it’s blocked by the door, um, but it’s just his hands on her windows, and he just goes (in a deep, gruff voice), “I WANT YOU!” (Laughs.) And so then she calls her neighbor, who’s this big, burly, like, construction or maintenance dude or something, and he comes out of his house with this giant pipe and chases the guy off, and, yeah, the, I guess, “alien” dude just drives off in his car, and… and I guess she hasn’t seen him since.

 

Thoughts:

I find it interesting that my informant’s teacher saw a “strange-looking man” following her and assumed it was an alien. I am also unsure as to whether this teacher truly believes she was stalked by an alien and was truly afraid, or whether she simply made this story up to make her students laugh. Her reputation among students as “crazy” seems to stem from her belief in aliens, as well as other bizarre behavior which other students of hers have told me are due to her belief in/interaction with aliens.

The Candle Dragon

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/4/17
Primary Language: English

“My grandpa loved to tell my this story of the Candle Dragon. He told it to me many times when I was younger. It explains why there are four seasons and day and night. There was a mysterious mountain in a rural part of China, where this serpent or dragon type creature with a human head lived. He was almost like a god for the people. His eyes were fiery and bright and when he had them open it was day. When he closed his eyes, it was nighttime. He created seasons when he breathed. So he would breathe in to create the summertime and blow out to make it cold during winter winter. Some versions say he had a sort of candle in his mouth, which is where he got the name of the Candle Dragon. When my grandpa told it, it was more story like, but I’m just stating the main facts of the tale.”

The informant has relatives in China who are very knowledgeable about Chinese folklore, although she was born here in the US. She said that she first heard this story from her grandpa, but other family members knew it as well. It’s a Chinese creation myth basically, describing what makes night and day and the seasons. Of course a dragon is involved, since dragons are respected in the Chinese culture.

I think this story is a cool version of another culture’s explanation for the seasons. It’s interesting how each culture has different aspects that make their creation myths unique to that region, like I mentioned earlier, as this story uses a dragon for example. It’s clever too, with the use of his eyes being the source of the sun and the moon.