Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Nat Sain Legend

Nationality: Burmese

Primary Language: Burmese

Other Language(s): English, Chinese

Age: 19

Occupation: Student

Residence: Hanover, N.H

Performance Date: 03/17/2024

P.P has been my friend since middle school and is also a Burmese person who is originally from Yangon, Myanmar. When I asked her of any legends, myths or tales she knows of, she recounts a known legend about people who died really unfortunate deaths becoming spirits. Her housekeeper told her this story since she is from the rural areas of Myanmar where a lot of these myths are considered true. Back home, it was common for most households to have housekeepers and so the relationships between housekeepers and the children of the house was usually one that was really familial and close knit. 

“Nat Sain are spirits who, before they died, were good and kind people but were killed off in really unfortunate ways. Because of this, Nat Sain are known to be full of vengeance and malicious intent. In this one story, the village is trying to build a bridge but the bridge keeps tumbling and falling apart no matter how hard they try to repair it. The people of the town believed in mythical spirits so they thought that if they found someone that matched a certain requirement for a specific birthday, age, day of the week they were born, then they should sacrifice that person so that the bridge can work. There is this woman who had a husband that worked on the construction site near the bridge. She always brought him food everyday and was friendly to everyone and fed them her food as well. One day she started to converse with someone near the bridge and they started asking her questions about her birthday and realized that she matched all the sacrifice’s requirements perfectly. The next day, people captured her, wrapped her in a sleeping mat, and dug a hole where the bridge’s support is supposed to be, and buried her alive. They end up building a bridge on top of it. My housekeeper said this was a myth for a real bridge in her village so people would always worship or say prayers for that Nat Sain whenever they cross the bridge so that they can cross it safely. Honestly I think my housekeeper was just trying to scare me and tell me an entertaining bedtime story before I went to bed for her own entertainment ahaha. I still think it’s a real story but, I don’t think there’s another meaning behind the story other than just focusing on the Nat Sain’s background. Maybe the legend’s intent was to make sure people respect the spirits since they have their own history and can be dangerous to others if people come to their area/sacred place.”

After hearing this story, I was pretty terrified to say the least. I interpret this legend as a spiritual tale in Buddhism or Burmese folklore, that was used to scare people with the purpose of spiritual or religious reinforcement. These stories are scary yet believable enough to ensure people don’t stray away from religion since it implies that there are many mythical figures out there that could harm you if you are sinful. I think this story mainly serves to explain why the bridge didn’t work previously. By creating a story, it provided answers while making sure people prayed and was careful when crossing the bridge.

Dia de Los Muertos

Nationality: Mexican/American
Primary Language: English
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Date: 4/21/2024

Text:

“In Mexico, the Day of the Dead is not just a time to mourn our loved ones who have passed but also a celebration of life. Families create altars with photos, foods, and items the deceased loved. It’s a colorful, vibrant expression of remembrance.”

Context:

E.C. first experienced Day of the Dead with her family in Mexico City. She explains that this tradition reflects the Mexican view on mortality and the afterlife. She remembers her grandma explaining that it is connection rather than separation.

Analysis:

This celebration challenges a lot of common perceptions of death in other cultures. As Mexicans take it in as a part of life to be embraced and celebrated. It’s a powerful reflection of how cultural practices can shape attitudes toward life and death. And how their interpretation is a more lively and uplifting one compared to other cultures.

Lunar New Year Origins

Context: the informant is a 21 year old USC student with two Taiwanese immigrant parents. She told me that this was the story behind Lunar New Year. I was unable to record her exact words, but I was given permission to paraphrase.

The story goes like this: a long long time ago, there was a village that was attacked on the same day every year by a monster named Nian, which is the Chinese word for year. Year after year, people would die and they couldn’t do anything about it. Somehow, the people found out that Nian was afraid of fire, and so before he came to attack the village that year, they hung up red lanterns, tapestries, and banners outside their doors, hoping the monster would mistake the red color for fire and leave them alone. That year, when Nian came, he saw the decorations and was frightened away; that was the first year that nobody died. Every year after that, on that specific day, they would put up red decorations, hang red lanterns outside the walls, and set off firecrackers at night to make sure that the monster would never come back. During the day, children would also be given red envelopes to put under their pillows for protection. After that first year Nian was driven away, he never came back, too scared of the red colors that he thought were fire. Now for Chinese New Year, everyone wears red and puts up red decorations as a tradition, but this is the way it started.

Analysis: From the definitions we work off of in class, this would be classified as a legend because, while it’s an origin story, it’s an origin story for a tradition rather than a people or a land. It’s clearly set in our world and isn’t necessarily sacred, so if anything, it would be a legend, considering its veracity cannot be verified and it seems like something that, though supernatural, has the potential to be true.

Considering the red is supposed to mimic fire, it seems in theory very similar to some points that Francisco Vaz da Silva made about chromatic symbolism. He argues that the use of the black/white/red tricolor symbolism was “part of a general encoding of cultural values in sensory based categories” and while his argument was in relation to womanhood, I would say that some of might still apply. Red, in his example, was more of a sign of blood or maturation in Europe, but he goes on to reference a paper on African color symbolism that considers red as associated with activity or life-giving, much in the same way that blood might function.

Here, it represents similar concepts — red is a marker of life-giving in the way that it is a symbol of protection and its presence means the continued existence of life. Fire, and by extension, red, are both connected to the idea of life, resulting in an association of fire with vitality. Fire also brings light, driving away darkness and fear, creating another association with life-giving and continued success/safety.

Fire is also among one of the first things children are taught about (usually in the context of safety) and considering few things in nature are that color, I wonder if there’s more association of red with fire rather than blood for children who grow up hearing this story.

Hookman Urban Legend

“A young couple is like driving a car in the mountains or something. And they’re just talking to each other, having a good time. It’s dark, it’s night. This is before like phones were a thing. And they heard on the radio that recently a serial killer escaped from the nearby prison and he’s on the run and you can recognize him because he has a hook instead of a right hand. And the young couple was like, okay that’s scary but whatever, and they turned it off. They parked their car somewhere, and they were just chilling in a car and doing what a young couple in a car would do. They get startled because… oh man… what happens? I think something starts banging on the roof of the car or something… or no? Maybe they just hear creaking on the roof of the car. And they go, oh shoot, something is on top of the car. And they quickly get back into their seats and they drive off. Later on, they see there was a bloody hook attached to their car handle.”

Context: This story was told to me after requesting the teller for any pieces of narrative folklore that he knew of. The teller attributes this piece of folklore to a book of campfire stories he read in a store when he was a Cub Scout. While that was his most impressionable encounter with the story, he notes that the story had been told multiple times during his experience as a Boy Scout. 

Analysis: This “Hookman” story is a common urban legend of the modern age that, as the teller notes, is shared as a common scary campfire story. In the modern day, it can be clearly dated as something of the generalistic “past,” a time, as the teller says, before the modern era of phones but still a recognizable scene for an average American. This specific telling of the story is interesting due to how the fluidity of the story is shown through how the teller explains the legend. During multiple moments throughout the telling, the teller shuffles between specific details of what may have happened, though the core events of the story remain the same and undisputed. During the telling, prior to the text, the teller even admits that he views the story not as a specific procedure of events, but rather as a list of bullet points. When compared to the noted “oral formulaic method” of professional traditional storytellers, this instance of the telling can be said to follow this method somewhat through the formula of events, but the actual performance and style lacks a specific formula that allows the story to retain a syntactical consistency. This instance of the Hookman story thus acts as an example of how stories are shifted as they are passed on from person to person. 

Filipino Mumu Anecdote

“One of the Filipino little folklore stories that parents like to tell their children is about a ghost called the mumu; it’s basically the Filipino version of the boogeyman. I had no idea what this was as a child, but one of my friends who had recently immigrated – very fresh off the boat – was a very skittish person and during class in like second grade we had a blackout and all the lights literally turned off – I think we were watching a video or something – and then basically it was completely dark which is different from what brown-outs are like in the Philippines. So essentially, he got scared, and he screamed out ‘It’s a mumu! It’s a mumu!” and everyone was laughing about that [including me] until I asked my mom about that.”

Context: The teller is a Filipino American student at USC. This story was told to me in a conversation after asking for any myths or legends that the student knew of. As the teller says in the text, this anecdote is from a moment during childhood, specifically during elementary school. 

Analysis: Based on brief research, the mumu is a common term used by Filipino children to refer to ghosts and similar supernatural beings. As the teller told me briefly, it was commonly used as a way for parents to scare children – the mumu is thus a sort of legendary being specific to the population of Filipino youth. This anecdote is not necessarily a specific recounting of a pre-existing narrative, nor can it be considered a true memorate given that the teller doesn’t necessarily use the story as enforcement for beliefs in the mumu, but I collected this story because I think it demonstrates an interesting difference between how different populations react to traditional legendary creatures, particularly in the context of the mainland versus the diaspora, and also demonstrates how children in a diaspora learn about legends of their culture. While the teller’s friend who had spent time in the Philippines had seemingly intimate knowledge of the mumu, the teller himself had no clue before asking his parents specifically because of this incident. This anecdote explains how knowledge of traditional folklore in diasporas can be affected and increased by processes like immigration of residents from the original mainland, and points to how diasporic populations, without these interactions, can grow apart from the original folklore due to a lack of communication of the folklore or a separation from the environment that the original folklore is found in.