Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

La Llorona

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 13
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2013
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

“One time there was a lady named Maria, but people later called her ‘La Llorona’ ’cuz one night she used to go out with her sons. She drowned them in the lake and haunts people.”

This JEP informant heard this urban legend when he was five years old. His mother told him this as a bedtime story so that he would go to sleep. His mother learned about this legend from her mother. The informant believes that La Llorona exists even though he has never heard her haunting, because people have told him that she only screams in Mexico. (The informant has never been to Mexico and cannot confirm if the story about the woman’s screaming is true.) His mother, who is from Mexico, does not believe in the legend, though. As an aside, the informant told this story to his little brother to scare him.

“La Llorona” translates to “the weeping or moaning woman” in English. This legend tells the story of a woman driven by madness who drowns her sons in a nearby lake. She then haunts the locals as a ghost woman. This story could have possibly originated and spread greatly to explain the natural phenomena of noises caused by the wind. Also, the story serves as an entertaining, scary story that creates social ties among the listeners.

This legend is annotated. It can also be found at the following source: http://www.literacynet.org/lp/hperspectives/llorona.html

Haunted Civil War House

Nationality: American
Age: 52
Occupation: Aerospace Engineer
Residence: Sunnyvale, California
Performance Date: March 2013
Primary Language: English

“Okay, so when I was a kid growing up in Fairfax, Virginia, there was a house about a half-mile away from the house I grew up in and, uh, it’s a very old house – very well maintained, people do live there – but, uh, legend has it that it served as a hospital during the Civil War and, uh, obviously, injured soldiers would go there and, of course, some of the soldiers died. The legend is that, um, the house is haunted with the ghosts of the dead soldiers from the Civil War and this was well-known throughout my neighborhood among the children, and whenever we passed by the house, we’d always get a little nervous or scared or excited, and, um, we would also play in the front yard. The front yard was quite large – a few acres – and it had beautiful boxwood plants, all around the front yard and we would, uh, play hide-and-seek in the front yard, and it had a creek that ran through the front yard along with trees, and it was a lot of fun to play in the front yard. We also played in the backyard, which consisted of grass and, uh, thick woods. We played in the woods. We didn’t play in the grass area of the backyard, and there were times when I had met other adults my age who had grown up in the same city and, uh, for whatever reason, once in a while we would, uh, talk about that haunted house and the other people would remember that as well – that they had grown up believing it was a haunted house as well.”

The informant describes a childhood folk belief about a haunted neighborhood house. He heard about this folk belief from his peers. They would play in the yards of the haunted house. Though they believed in the spooky legend, it seems as though they played in the surrounding areas to taunt the “ghosts” residing in the house. The neighborhood children freely played outside in nature and allowed their imaginations to consider the possibility of the existence of Civil War soldiers’ ghosts. However, context is important. The children played near the well-maintained house presumably during the daytime. So, the idea of ghosts probably seemed less scary. In addition, the house was not considered taboo or forbidden. In bright daylight they were able to entertain the thought of ghosts and treat it as a subject that was not so serious. Had they met up at the woods around a dilapidated house at nighttime, maybe their attitudes toward the legend would have changed.

Through this pastime of playing in the woods, the children were able to share the story of a neighborhood house. The legend of the house and their playing near it affected the young children so much so that later, they were able to recall this story in their adulthood. This memorable pastime seems to be a defining, shared characteristic of their respective childhoods. Thus, the story holds significance in intertwining personal, regional, and national histories.

Legend of Coconut Tree (Hina and the Eel King) – Tahiti

Nationality: Tahitian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Arue, French Polynesia
Performance Date: April 12, 2013
Primary Language: French
Language: English

So this is known as the legend of the coconut tree, or the legend of Hina and the Eel King.  It’s a story my grandfather used to tell me as a kid, and was told to a lot of kids in Tahiti.  Their grandparents or older people who still speak Tahitian most often tell it to the kids at home.  So it goes something like this: Once upon a time, a long, long, time ago, there was a beautiful girl named Hina.  She had the longest, silkiest hair in the district, and she made her parents proud because of her beauty, and brains, and – well, she was perfect.  By the time she turned 16, she had been promised to marry the Prince of Eels, and it was supposed to, how do you say it?  Well back in the day marriage was more of a social-economic thing, so her marriage was supposed to bring together the people of the oceans and the rivers and the people of the earth.  But Hina was very repulsed by her fiance’s looks, so one night she ran away and found refuge with the god of hunting and fishing, whose name was Hiro.  She told him her story, and he was so baffled by her beauty  and so into her story that he decided to help her.    He made a fishing line with her hair, then they went out to the river and fished the Prince Eel.  After they caught him, and before Hiro killed him, the eel told Hina that whether she wanted it or not, she would kiss him.  Hiro cut the eel in piece and put his head in leaves and put it in a leaf basket and gave it to Hina for her to keep, and he said “Until the head is gone, do not put the basket on the ground.”  So she went back to her village, happy that she didn’t have to marry him.  One day they went down to the river and everybody was bathing, and all of Hina’s friends were calling her to the water, and she said she couldn’t, she had to keep an eye on the eel head.  But it was really hot so she thought, “what will happen anyways?” So she put the basket on the ground, and when she got out of the water she found that in the place of the eels head was now a tree that looked very much like an eel – It had a long trunk and hair-like leaves at the top – and she didn’t think it was a bad thing.  But not long after the dry season came, and everybody was running out of water, and she found these fruits, coconuts, and heard from the fruit that there was liquid in it.  So she started drinking the liquid and was drinking from the coconut when the head of the eel materialized – the coconut has three holes, so it was two eyes and the mouth of the eel – and the eel said, “I told you one day you’d kiss me.”  And that’s the story of Hina and the King Eel.

My grandfather used to tell it far better than I do.    He threw in Tahitian words, but I don’t remember them now.  I used to tell this story to my little brother, but I think even he thinks I’m a bad storyteller.  But when I was a little girl, I used to think that when I drank a coconut I was really kissing the King Eel.  I think eels are disgusting so I stayed away from coconuts for a while.

Tam grew up in Tahiti, and her family has been there for many generations.  Her grandfather, the one who told her this story, was the primary storyteller in her family.  He spoke Tahitian, but Tam does not, so the Tahitian-language elements have been lost.  But according to Tam this was her favorite story, and her grandfather told her it quite often.  And after he passed, she took it upon herself to tell it to her little brother to keep it alive.

I never really thought the coconut looked like a eel, but I guess if you look at it after hearing this story you can kind of see it.  I found the fact that traditional elements of the story were lost over generations is becoming very common.  With this age of technology and transformation, I feel like a traditional culture/heritage can be lost more easily.  I know for me, at least, I didn’t really even know much of my own cultural folklore until this project.  And I even think Tam recognized the fact that the legend lost some cultural value between her grandfather telling her the story and her telling her brother the story.  But at least she’s keeping it going!


Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak – South Africa

Nationality: South African
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Cape Town, South Africa
Performance Date: April 12, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Afrikaans

I’m South African, and I’ve always grown up hearing the story about how the 2 main mountains in my hometown, Cape Town, Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak, got their names.  Table Mountain is a really long, flat mountain that resembles a table, hence the name, and occasionally a wave of clouds will come over it and are extremely flat and resemble a table cloth.  And so from a young age – I can’t remember exactly who told it to me for the first time – but it’s kind of like Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny back home.  Everybody knows the story.  

And the story goes that there was a man named van Hunks, whose wife would not let him smoke at home, so he always had to walk outside to smoke.  And one day he ran into another man who challenged him to a smoking contest.  They smoked for a long, long, long, time, and eventually the man won.  And then the man realized that his partner was actually the devil, so that’s how the second mountain, which neighbors Table Mountain, got the name Devil’s Peak.  And the “tablecloth” that goes with the table symbolizes the smoke from the man who won the competition and his home life and his enjoyment of smoking.

Konstanze (Stanzi) told me that this story has been around for ages, and is passed down in many families in Cape Town. Her family has been in South Africa for at least 7 generations, and has been passed down in her own family for a very long time.  Stanzi (my roommate) has invited me to visit her in South Africa this winter, and said she would make it a point to show me the mountains so I know what they look like in person.  It is a very unique story, I think, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a smoking match.  That’s just not something you hear about very often.

“Thirteen Days to Immortality”

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student, Camp Counselor
Residence: San Antonio, TX
Performance Date: April 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

             The informant explained that most schoolchildren in San Antonio are familiar with a song written about the Texans’ final days at the Alamo Mission, where a group of Texan military leaders and their troops resisted the Mexican army’s assault for thirteen days before they were all killed. The song, “Thirteen Days to Immortality,” is incorporated into theatrical performances of the Alamo, namely the Phantom of the Alamo. It is a popular feature at annual school performances and at local summer camps. She acknowledged that the author is unknown and, while the song is sung to a medley of musical tunes from other folk songs, she couldn’t identify which ones.She did, however, note that while her parents were familiar with the song during their childhood, her grandparents had never encountered it, suggesting that it is a fairly recent folk song that has emerged over the last two generations.

 

Oh! What a beautiful sunrise,
Day Twelve is a wonderful day!
Texans all gather together
To find out who all wants to stay.
Travis and Crockett, Jim Bowie
Lead the men over the line.
One man decides it’s not worth it,
It’s not his time yet to die.

 

On Day Thirteen. . .everyone died.
All of the heroes who fought on both sides.
Take down the flag, honor the dead, isn’t it sad.
Everyone suffers the loss for those are bad.
Take down the flag, take down the flag.

           

            The song is clearly a children’s song, akin to one you might see taught in a history class to aid children in memorizing historical facts. It is sung to a cheery tune, and there is a heavy emphasis on the collective loss shared by both parties during wartime: “Everyone suffers the loss.” Moreover, the lyrics also recognize heroics in both the Texan and Mexican troops, introducing the values of equality and honor in fighting for one’s land. “Thirteen Days to Immortality” presents perhaps a more sympathetic angle than the legend of the Alamo itself, which antagonizes the Mexican troops as the aggressors and looks unfavorably upon those who flee from death in battle (the lone Texan who abandoned the Alamo was left cursed to haunt the Alamo). Instead, the lyrics mourn the lives of the fallen, calling the deaths “sad” and the deserter is receives no negative attention at all.

            Both “Thirteen Days to Immortality” and the historical legend of the Alamo illustrate examples of war-related folklore or, in this case, folk history.  The song, in particular, relies on a lexicon of war-related vocabulary, namely “hero,” “honor,” and “flag.” In this way, outside of the song’s lyrical content, the vocabulary is recognizable as being related to war texts and literature.