Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Jewish Golem

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/18/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

“There’s a really interesting story that today still exists. It’s supposedly a fable, and I don’t know if it is or is not. It happened in Prague I think. It’s about the creation of the golem. It originated at the time when Jews were being persecuted. Someone was going around saying that Jews were killing newborn babies and putting their blood in some kind of food. Obviously, this was not true. So anyway, this famous rabbi used a spell to bring to life this thing that was made out of clay called the golem. He was supposed to be the protector of the Jews. And he had written on his forehead, “EMET” which means truth in Hebrew. He would basically walk with the Jews to make sure that they wouldn’t be attacked. At some point it was time to put him to sleep so the Rabbi removed one of the letters from EMET so it became just MET, which in Hebrew means, death. So golem died and apparently his body still exists in this synagogue in Prague and they don’t let people into the attic because he’s apparently there.”

Alex said her mother told her this story when she was younger. She said she heard it a few times, sometimes with slightly different variations, but the story of the golem is a very popular one.

This is a simple folk tale told in different variations within the Jewish community. A golem is a being created entirely from inanimate matter, usually clay or mud.

I had never heard of a golem before this, but upon further research I realize that it is distinctly a Jewish folk belief. Many cultures have various beliefs about making inanimate objects come to life, but I think this variation is very interesting. The detail about writing “emet” on it’s head and then removing the one “e” to make it become “death” is very clever and intriguing.

For a more detailed and different variation of this story and more background information, read the following short story about the golem here: http://www.bibleandjewishstudies.net/stories/The_Golem_of_Prague.pdf

 

Yossele the Miser

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Denver, CO
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

“There’s folktale about this man who, in Yiddish it’s called, being a “miser”, which means you’re being stingy. And there’s a story about Yossele the Miser, I think. I think it was in eastern Europe somewhere. People would come asking him for money since he was very wealthy, and he would bring them in and ask them what they needed and why. He would listen and then would immediately send them away with nothing. So of course, everyone hated him. Then when he died, no one was really at his funeral. All of a sudden, all these people came to the local synagogue and would tell the rabbi that they used to get all this food and money randomly and now it stopped coming. They couldn’t figure out who was giving it and why it stopped, and eventually they realized this guy was giving it anonymously to them and that’s why it stopped. It kind of was a message saying the best kind of charity is the kind that people don’t know about. My family believes in this, and it’s very big in the Jewish culture. It’s better to be an anonymous donation because then it’s completely unselfish.”

R, the informant, said her grandmother told her this story when she was younger. She said it was a fable because it came with a lesson. It taught kids that the best way to give was to give selflessly, and not ask for any sort of recognition. She said it’s a very popular story in her community and the practice is giving anonymously is highly respected.

This is a common story told within the Jewish community. It’s meant to teach people an important lesson about being selfless and giving without wanting recognition or reward. It seems like it’s a story told within the household by other family members.

This seems similar to other biblical stories and does have an important message. I think it’s an important story for kids to hear, so they grow up understanding how important it is to give selflessly, but also respect those who have given things to you.

For a more detailed verison of the story, visit: http://www.nishmas.org/stories/holymiser.htm

 

La Llorona

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 31 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background of informant:

My informant (AG)’s parents moved from Mexico to Los Angeles before her birth. She speaks Spanish to her parents in home and is surrounded by Mexican culture.

 

Main piece:

AG: “The story that I know about her is that, she was with a man and they had children together. And for some reason, she became crazy. Either because of the guy, or just because of herself [in a questioning tone]. Let’s say, I don’t really know why. Because of that, uhh, she went crazy and she drowned her kids in the river. And then when she realized what she did, she wanted the kids back. But she couldn’t so she killed herself, thinking that she could reunited with them. But when she went to heaven, because she committed suicide, she couldn’t get into heaven and had to find her kids back. So she came back to earth and she’s like [pause] damned. Just wandering on the street looking for her children. And then like, what she said, was like ‘Where’s my kids?’, ‘¿Dónde estás Mi hijo?’”

 

SH: Is this sentence always a part when people tell this story?

 

AG: “Yes, cause you learned as a kid…like… [pause] I think I learned from some older cousin and they were trying to scare the younger kids. And cause you are little, so its like “no you can’t follow us, cause La Llorona will come and she’ll be like ‘¿Dónde estás Mi hijo?’ [in a different tone] and she’ll take you!” Cause you’re kid so she’ll think that you were hers kid. ”

 

AG: “Surprisingly, a lot of adults, [pause], kind of believe in it. Cause like, my uncle claimed that he heard her and seen her. But a weird thing about Latin American, especially Mexican, is that they can be very superstitious. […] People claim that every time when you’re sleeping and hear a crying outside, “Oh, that’s Llorona!” And when you wake up, you’ll just have discussion with your family, like, “I heard, I heard La Llorona last night.” So it’s like in certain situation, we talk about supernatural stuffs.”

 

Context of the performance:

AG and I were discussing on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo in a writing class. When we were close reading the scene when the female character jumps into SF Bay to kill her self, she told me this really reminds her of a story she heard when she was young. And she started to talk to me about this story and it turns out that this female character in Vertigo shares many similarities with La Llorona.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

This piece was performed after I first knew about La Llorona’s story on ANTH 333 lecture. Not only is the content of the piece slightly different from the version that I heard of, the context when my informant learned about this piece is also different. Instead of being told by parents to kids, or among young women (as what we’ve discussing on class), AG was told by her older cousins to scare her in order to prevent her from following them.

 

For another version of this legend, see Vertigo (1958).

Manneken-Pis

Nationality: Belgium
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Brussels, Belgium
Performance Date: April 1 2017
Primary Language: French
Language: English, Spanish, Dutch

Background of informant:

My informant YF is an international student from Brussels, Belgium. He spent the first two years of high school in Los Angeles, and the last year back in Brussels. He lived in Wallonia in Belgium, which is the French-speaking region that accounts more than a half of the country.

 

Main piece:

YF: “There’s a really famous thing in Brussels, I don’t know why, but Chinese tourists are always like: ‘I wanna see Manneken-Pis!’ So Manneken-Pis is a statue in Brussels, it’s like the most recognizable thing in Belgium. ‘Manneken-Pis’ is directly translated as ‘Little Men Pissing’. It’s a small statue beside a fountain.

“So there are so many stories about this little guy pissing, so for example, one of the would be that this evil witch set a bomb to destroy Brussels, and Menneken-Pis saved Brussels by pissing on the witch that was going to set up the bomb.

“Another thing about the name ‘Menneken-Pis’ is that, ‘Menneken’ is a dialect from Brussels, … Brusselly [laugh]. It’s just the dialect that combine both French and Dutch and it is spoke by people in Brussels. So we have different dialects in different regions of Belgium, in the southern part, the dialect is Wollo, because the regions Wallonia. But wollon can be entirely different in different cities or town in the southern part too. Dialect is never taught at school, but it’s spoke in home. However, dialects are dying now. My grandma speaks it and my mom speaks it. But my mom doesn’t really talk Wollon to any one other from my grandma. Honestly, it’s only old people who speak it, because there’s a period when kids were required to speak only French in everywhere, since Wollon was considered as vulgar. It’s dying now, because of urbanization, is killing the culture.

“Back to the little man pissing, it is located very near to the Grand-Place, which means ‘Big Plaza’ or in Dutch as ‘Grote Markt’.

“For the version about the witch that I heard of, about Manneken-Pis, I might learned it from a camp that I went to when I was younger.

“What funny about Manneken-Pis is that, during certain times of the year, there’s this place that makes costume for Manneken-Pis. So like if it is Christmas, he wears a Santa Claus outfit. Or sometimes, there are fashion designers make clothes for Manneken-Pis.”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a part of the interview I had with my informant YF.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

The conversation started with YF said, “I don’t know why, but Chinese tourists are always like: ‘I wanna see Manneken-Pis!’” And when we looked at the street view of it using Google Map, there are always a bunch of tourists surrounding by the Manneken-Pis, whether is on a sunny day or a rainy day.

Also, YF told me that there’s another similar statue called Janneke-Pis. Since Manneke means little man where the suffix “-ke” is a diminutive, Janneke means the similar ting, except it’s a little girl that’s pissing, and Jan doesn’t mean girl, Janneke means little Jane. It is located in a dead end street next to a really famous bar called “Delirium Tremens” in Brussels, which is the bar that has the most beers available in the world at any given moment (their menu offers more than 300 beers).

The Ghost Without Face

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 47
Occupation: Animation film director, college professor
Residence: Beijing, China
Performance Date: Mar 12 2017
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

My informant CH is a 47 years old Chinese animation film director. He was born and lived in southern part of China, especially Changshu and Nanjing for many years before she moved to the north, Beijing at age 34.

The conversation is in Chinese.

 

Main Piece:

The Ghost Without Face:

CH: “When I was very young, like 10 years old, I always had a same nightmare over and over again, repeating the same thing every night. In the dream, I was lying on my bed in the same room that I was supposed to be, and I saw a person walking toward me from the door. But the person is always in darkness, so I was very scared and tried to turn o the light. I turned on the light, but the light was vey dim, and was flashing all the time. So I never saw that person’s face.”

The Strange Sound:

CH: “Almost at the same time period, there’s always a strange sound in our home. It sounds like cricket, but it’s not. I can’t really describe the sound for you. I was never sure what it really was. My whole family started to look for the thing that made this sound but we found nothing. Until one day, my uncle from Wuxi came to visit us. I remember, at that time, he was in his prime of life, like forty years old. He snored really loudly at night when sleeping. Interestingly, after he stayed in my home for two days, the sound never appears again. It’s gone.”

“This was the time when my grandpa just past away. I always saw him looking at me, smiling to me. But I was afraid because I knew he was dead. Now I think he was coming back home to see me during night time as a ghost, coming into my dream.”

SH: Do you think the person you mentioned in the first story was your grandpa?

CH: “hmm… It’s not him. It’s a man, a big man.”

 

Context of the performance:

This is a part of the conversation with my informant CH. He recalled that he didn’t tell anyone about his strange dream until he grew up a little bit. And later on, he would tell these stories in parties when people gathered together talking about ghosts stories or supernatural things, he would always share his own stories.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

Since the three events were happening close in time, the dream, the sound and Grandpa pass away, CH believed they are in connection. Also, as mentioned in the second story, the uncle somehow “dispelled” the sound, due to the fact that he is a middle age man with strong Yang Qi (Yang spirit), while ghosts are believed to be attracted by Yin Qi (opposite to Yang spirit). Yin Qi is most often accumulated in women and young children. If we put CH’s stories under this Chinese theory to explain human’s relation to supernatural, the stories can therefore be explained.