Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Irish Banshee

Nationality: Irish
Age: 30
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: May 5, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Celtic

The Banshee was another story I was told about, but not by my parents. My brother used to tell me this to scare me. At night we were outside and there was like a howl, or uh, something that I didn’t recognize, and um, he knew what it was but told me it was a banshee, which is . . . like a woman spirit/witch wanders about at night time crying out with high wails when there is going to be, like, a death in the family and whoever hears it, their family will be effected. Needless to say it scared the hell out of me and I was relieved when no one was dead the next morning! Ha, haha!

Legends about fairies and elves are very important in Ireland. “Believing” in the fair folk, whether you actually believe or not, is considered patriotic. Children raised in Ireland are expected to know of and participate in the belief of the fair folk, although, as is the case with my friend, they largely grew out of the belief of these legends as they grew older.

The Berkeley-Stanford Ax Story

Nationality: Caucasian
Age: 19
Occupation: Berkeley Biology Student
Residence: Berkeley
Performance Date: April 27, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

In the late 1800s, there were two universities in the Bay area. One of them was the University of California in Berkeley and the other was a small junior college across the bay founded by the criminal Leland Stanford Junior. These schools had a sports “rivalry.” Basically, each year, Cal would Beat the junior college in track, football, baseball, and other sports. The Junior college were running low on money to fund their failing sports program. They were so desperate that they were considering cutting down their redwood tree mascot. However, before they could, a meteor came down and crashed in the sewage at Stanford. This sewage splashed on the walls of all the buildings of the college. To this day, the buildings are still covered with this excrement which give the buildings at Leland Stanford Junior College their distinctive adobe appearance and smell. The female college students decided to take the meteor to a blacksmith and have it shaped into an ax They would use this ax to rally around during sports games. Only the female Stanford students were strong enough to carry it, and to this day, any male Stanford student who is able to lift the as, all by himself, will be crowned King of Bowdell Hall ( the women’s dorm). Anyway, the Stanfurdians brought this ax to the Cal-Stanford games with no effect. During the first football game with the ax, which Stanfurd naturally lost, some Cal athletes watching the game decided to steal the ax for a trophy. They were pursued by Stanfurd students to San Francisco where the Cal students had decided to get the handle taken off the ax,. There was a crazy pursuit through San Francisco. The police searched all Cal students on their way back to Berkeley through Oakland but were unable to find the ax since a Cal student hid it under an old girlfriend’s skirt. The next year, Stanford almost stole the ax back. Cal was just about to catch the Stanfurdians as they crossed a bridge on their way back to Palo Alto, but the bridge was raised before they could cross it. It was later discovered that the bridge operator was a suma cum laude graduate from the Leland Stanford Junior College Engineering school. It was the best job he could find. Cal and Stanford continued to steal the ax from each other. The robberies grew so intense that the leaders of the respective schools decided that the ax would be awarded to whoever won Big Game each year.

This funny story is told to freshman Berkeley students as a means of initiation. The story gives a history of the school, the Ax tradtion, and it’s age-old rivalry with the nearby Stanford, telling how these things came to be. Any true UC Berkeley student or alumni would be intimately familiar with this story and able to recount it as a member of the Cal community. Often the story is recounted over a bonfire to get students excited for the “Big Game.”

Irish Fairy Rings

Nationality: Irish
Age: 30
Occupation: USC Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: May 2, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Celtic

So when I was a kid I lived in the countryside in Ireland. There is a lot of folklore and myths, but the one thing I remember most is, uh, coming across a number of fairy rings in our fields–which is, um, basically a circle of mushrooms or a circle of different color or height grass. I was always told not to walk into these circles, because they are magic fairy forts–which I believed–and that if I disturbed them the faeries would come after me and cause mischief, like putting thorns in my bed, um, or misplacing things on me. Also we were told if we do step into it, to be careful not to take anything from it, or break anything because then the same thing would happen–they would come to get that stick, or, uh, whatever we took, back.

Legends about fairies and elves are very important in Ireland. “Believing” in the fair folk, whether you actually believe or not, is considered patriotic. Children raised in Ireland are expected to know of and participate in the belief of the fair folk, although, as is the case with my friend, they largely grew out of the belief of these legends as they grew older.

Potstickers myth

Nationality: Irish, German, Czech American
Age: 15
Occupation: High School Student
Residence: Deephaven, MN
Performance Date: March 19th, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, French

My informant is a high school student who has been taking Chinese in school since kindergarten (age 5), to make a total of 10 years of study. She traveled to Taiwan last summer doing a homestay. She was born in Wisconsin, but raised in a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is very knowledgeable of Asian culture; she has had a passion for learning languages and learning about different cultures since a young age. She also studies Japanese Language and culture. My informant heard this legend explaining how potstickers were invented from her Chinese instructor, who is from China. She told me this story because of her interest in Chinese culture.

Informant: This emperor from China asked his chef to make him some food. So the chef decided to make dumplings. Then, he forgot about them in the pot…When he came back to the kitchen, they were stuck to the pot. He was going to make more food because he messed up, but the emperor really wanted to eat. Because he did not have time, the chef brought the overcooked dumplings to the emperor and told him that he was trying something new called “potstickers” because they stuck to the pot. The emperor thought they were tasty and voila, potstickers!

Me: Where did you learn this from?

Informant: From 8th grade Chinese class

Me: From who?

Informant: Tan Lao Shi (Informant’s Chinese instructor)

Me: Where is she from and who did she hear it from?

Informant: Mainland China and her parents told her the story.

Me:Why did your teacher tell you this story?

Informant: Because we were doing a project Chinese folklore. We had to find a story and then make a presentation about the story. She told us this story as an example of a story we could do for our presentation.

I thought it was interesting that my informant had to do a folklore assignment for her Chinese language class. Her Chinese teacher gave this story as an example of a common piece of folklore that is passed down in China. It was interesting that my informant heard this from her Chinese teacher who is actually form China, because it seems like a story that Americans could have developed to explain how this food came to be. It reminds me of the story about how pretzels were invented which was My informant told me that she tells this story when at Asian restaurants to her friends, because it is like a “fun fact.” She is interested in any Chinese stories and says that she gets them from her high school in structors how are from mainland China.

Si Tayeb Biaz

Nationality: Moroccan
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/28/13
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish

My informant was born in Fez, Morocco, then moved to the United States, and then moved back to Morocco but to the mountains when he was five years old. He attended high school in Auburn, Alabama. My informant told me stories about the origin of his last name, how is family got to Morocco, folklore stories about his family, and a family superstition. All three stories that I collected were passed down from father to son to father to son, my informant being the son. My informant’s father, who is one of twelve children in his family, became the active bearer of this family lore. My informant is the only son in his family, so he commented that he will be the active bearer after his father passes. My informant speaks French at home, and these stories were translated from French to English. The setting is an apartment bedroom in Los Angeles.

Informant: And so a couple hundred years ago there was this guy name Si Tayeb Biaz. Si is like Mr. and Tayeb and T-A-Y-E-B. And so the family became a little political. And this guy became the minister of foreign affairs for Morocco. And he was very close to the king. And he became an extremely powerful man and there was a giant fountain built in his honor in the middle of Fez and it said [pause] “drink, be merry, and remember the Biaz, the face of heaven” in Arabic. It was an inscription on the fountain, that’s still there to this day. But, but, Si Tayeb was becoming really influential so Fez was the capital of Morocco at the time. So he became really influential and really powerful. Enough that the king began to feel threatened and he thought that Si Tayeb was planning an overthrow the king.

Me: but was he?

Informant: We don’t know. We don’t know if he was. It could have been grounded in some truth. And so he had him executed. But because he liked him so much, he let his family live and keep the estate and so we were still around. But he had them executed, he had him beheaded and then he had the inscription changed on the fountain.

 

My informant first heard this story from an uncle, to explain why his family does not like politics. I liked this story because the elements of uncertainty as to whether or not Si Tayeb was actually planning to overthrow the king, give the story a legendary quality. There is additional mystery in the story, because there is no proof of the inscription on the statue, because it was removed after the execution. It is also interesting to note that my informant first heard the story in French, but told me the story in English. The story also probably started out in Arabic and then was told in French. As more generations of my informant’s family stay in the United States, I wonder if the “active bearer’s” version of the story will remain in French or begin to be passed down in English.