Category Archives: Myths

Sacred narratives

The Goat-Man Of Pope Lick Creek

Nationality: American (Kentucky)
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/7/2021
Primary Language: English

Informant’s Background:

My informant, AH, was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, but now lives in Los Angeles where she attends undergraduate study at USC. She is 21 years old.

Context:

The informant is a close friend and former roommate of mine. I asked her if she had any folklore from her hometown in Kentucky she could share with me. For the purposes of this performance, she is labeled as AH, and I am labeled as AT.

Performance:

AH: “So there’s this creek, pretty close to my house, probably about like ten minutes away, it’s called Pope Lick, I don’t know why, but uhm me and my friends would go there pretty often because there’s these like train tracks that run up above and underneath there is where the goat man is supposed to be. So the goat man he’s supposed to be like legs of a goat, top part of a dude, and what he’s supposed to do is if you’re there at night (which we were pretty often), he’d go and like either like lure you down and then go and like grab you and eat you or he’d like fucking jump down and get you. But that was his whole thing like (*in spooky voice*) oooOOhhh we’re hanging out, and we might die! Someone’s gonna get killed by the goat man! But it was very fun, yeah, that’s most of the stuff.”

AT: “Where did you first hear about it?”

AH: “So I first heard of it… my uh-my girlfriend at the time she was like “oh, have you heard of the goat man?” and I was like “no” and she was like “yeah so if we go here at night we might see this like goat man person thing.” And that was like when I first heard about it and then we went together and we didn’t see anything, but it was definitely kind of like a creepy vibe, like abandon fucking train tracks, kind of creepy.”

Thoughts:

The first thing that came to mind upon my hearing about this was Ray Cashman’s article Visions of Irish Nationalism, which we read in class, more specifically where Cashman discusses how a seemingly innocuous location can hold a special meaning to the locals of the area or to those properly informed (Cashman, 373). In this case, the location is seemingly mundane, a railroad trestle bridge, yet there it has a different meaning to those that live in the area that are “in the know”. According to my research, there actually have been a number of deaths as recently as 2019 at the location, as it is actually not abandoned and is a major railway for trains. So in this case we see an example where depending on the time of the visit, and how safe they were being, the informant and their partner could easily have been seriously injured by going to a location that is actively dangerous and prohibited of entry to the public, yet the myth surrounding the location provides a new meaning to the location, and makes it a desirable destination to visit for locals.

Cashman, Ray. Visions of Irish Nationalism. Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 45, No. 3. Pp. 361-381.

Hitchhiking And Serial Killers In The U.S.

Nationality: American (Arizona)
Age: 22
Occupation: Aerospace Engineering Student
Residence: Tempe, Arizona
Performance Date: 4/10/2021
Primary Language: English

Informant’s Background:

My informant, DK, is a undergraduate student at Arizona State University studying aerospace engineering. He lives in Tempe, Arizona. His family is American and he was born and raised in Arizona, where he has lived his entire life.

Context:

My informant, DK, and I are friends, after meeting online through a mutual friend during the pandemic. I asked him if he had any folklore to share.

Performance:

DK: “Alright. Uhh… My middle-school math teacher, his name was (REDACTED), uh, very interesting guy. He fled home when he was 18, and I think he joined… he joined up with a traveling circus. (DK laughs). Like, I’m not making this up he legitimately joined a traveling circus. Uh, and then, at another point he decided to hitchhike across America. You know, hitchhike from point A to point B… uh, not really caring where he was going, you know… it’s the 70s. Uh, and so he is on the West Coast, in California during this time… And uh, he is hitching of course, like I said… and so he gets picked up by some guy, guy is giving him real creepy vibes. Just like a no-good dude kind of situation. Uh, and the guy keeps asking like creepy questions like… “Do you have any family? Do you live nearby?” Like that kind of stuff. And eventually my math teacher gets creeped out SO much the decides to bail from the car, literally like jumps out of the car while it is still rolling and runs away. And… you know, and normally that’s the end of the story except my math teacher saw on the news later that day, err…. The next day, actually, that there was a hitchhiker found who was found dead on the beach, uh, nearby where he was. And that… probably was the like same guy picking up another hitchhiker and killing him. And that that was like a serial killer who was doing that stuff so… that’s the story of my awesome math teacher who was almost killed by a serial killer when he was a young lad.

AT: “Ok, did you hear this from your math teacher?”

DK: “Yeah!”

AT: “Ok, what was the context in which he told you the story?”

DK: “Uh… It was math class. (DK laughs.) We didn’t have much to talk about at the time. He was a really neat dude, he had a lot of stories like that.”

AT: “Was it a known or a famous serial killer?”

DK: “I think it was, but… it… it’s been so long that I’ve forgotten which serial killer.”

Thoughts:
Serial killers have played a prominent role in American culture and folklore ever since the late twentieth century, if not earlier. While serial killings still occur in modern American society, the rise of mass shootings and other large-scale violence and killings such as the rise of domestic terrorism have in a way pushed serial killings and serial killers away from the limelight, and at least in the collective conscious they have become a almost quaint thing of the past. Television shows such as Netflix’s Mindhunter, or it’s various documentaries about real-life serial killers have propelled the murderers of the late twentieth century into the status of myths and legends. This particular story seems a perfect encapsulation of this kind of serial killer tale. The time period is the late twentieth century, with the setup of the story being that the informant’s teacher is hitchhiking, a phenomenon that has widely fallen out of practice as it is nowadays deemed “unsafe”, primarily because of stories such as this one. Popular American media is also full of such stories, such as in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, where a group of hitchhikers find themselves at the mercy of a family of hillbilly serial killers. The scary and widely now considered relatively unsafe times of the late twentieth century in America lead themselves to all sorts of morbid tales, cults, serial killings, and the like were at the forefront of American cultural consciousness at the time, and as a result many such tales of the period, such as the one found in this article, have lasted to this day.

The Valge Laev (The White Ship) Of Estonia

Nationality: Estonian/Canadian
Age: 68
Occupation: University Professor
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Estonian

Informant’s Background:

The informant, in this case, is my mother, M, who was a first generation immigrant born to an Estonian family in the North-East of Canada. Her family had escaped from occupied Estonia, and had settled in Canada before she was born. She moved with my father to Los Angeles, in the United States, to take a job as a university professor. My brother and I were born a few years after.

Context:

I mentioned collecting folklore to my mother, who I regularly call on the phone now that I have moved out of our house, and she told me that she wanted to help. I told her yes, and she emailed me the following.

Performance (Written Over Email):

M: “This myth dates back to 1860 when a peasant preacher declared himself a prophet and called on his followers to leave Estonia to resettle in the Crimea in southern Russia. He went on ahead and promised that a white ship – the “Valge Laev” — would come to take them to this Promised Land. Several hundred families gathered on the beach to wait for the white ship, but it never came. Most Estonians were serfs, living under extremely harsh conditions, basically slavery, until 1811. Even after serfdom was abolished, life for the peasants was very hard, and there were several unsuccessful revolts against the German nobility who still owned most of the land. The White Ship was a symbol of hope, of escape to freedom and a better life.”

Informant’s Thoughts (Written Over Email):

M: “My mother was a young girl in Estonia during World War II, surviving two occupations, the first by the Red Army in 1940, the second by Nazi Germany, from 1941 to 1944. In the late summer of 1944, as Germany was losing the war and German troops were leaving Estonia, the “Soome Poisid” (“Finnish boys” – Estonians who had volunteered to fight with the Finns during the Winter War with the Soviet Union) came back to Estonia, ready to make a last stand for Estonian independence. My mother’s brother Rein was one of them. The situation was hopeless; the Red Army was closing in. But Estonians remembered that the British had come to their aid during the War of Independence (1918-1920). And so the myth of the White Ship returned.”

Thoughts:

I think this myth makes total sense given Estonia’s troubled history. The frequent invasions and occupations by foreign forces throughout Estonian history have no doubt led to many myths and tales created with the intention of spreading hope of freedom for the Estonian people. The fact that this myth was able to survive and be retold a century later speaks to Estonia’s dependence on folklore as a means of maintaining its cultural identity, and to the need for hope and resilience during it’s many occupations.

Nuwa’s Creation of Humanity – Chinese Myth

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Santa Barbara, California
Performance Date: 03/22/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean, Mandarin

Context: After learning about myths in class, I was interested if there were any Chinese creation myths. I called up a friend of mine (JK) who knew a lot about creation stories, and he told me this one about Nuwa creating humanity. 

Story: 

JK: “This myth is about the creation of humanity, and the main divine being in the myth is Nuwa. Nuwa, sometimes called Nugua, is basically the mother goddess in Chinese mythology and is one of the most compassionate gods. The story goes that after the creation of the world, Nuwa was filled with feelings of loneliness, which only grew more and more intense. In order to solve this problem, she molded yellow clay into a smaller version of herself. These were the first humans, but Nuwa soon realized that molding individual humans one by one was too time-consuming, and devised a new method by dragging a piece of string across the dirt. And that’s really all there is to it.”

Background: My friend first learned about this myth from hearing that Nuwa was the creator of humanity in his Chinese school. He did some more digging and asked his parents if they knew more about Nuwa and humanity’s creation, and his father told him the story. My friend’s outlook after some research on the myth is that those on top of the social hierarchy in ancient China created this myth for their own gain because the rich nobles at the time thought that they were the first people who were hand crated by Nuwa. They believed that the commoners were those that were created by Nuwa dragging string through the mud, which is why the nobles were more privileged and important to society.

Thoughts: After doing some further digging, I learned that Nuwa did a lot of things in order to help humanity in Chinese mythology. When the fire and water gods were fighting, they tore up the sky and Nuwa was the one that had to calm them down. She single-handedly patched up the sky and stopped all the storms that were the result of the fighting. I thought the myth of humanity’s creation was really interesting because of the way the nobles used it and perceived themselves to be naturally born into a higher class due to a difference in their creation from the peasants. I also learned that a lot of other cultures had similar ideas of mankind being created from earth or clay. One example of this is Prometheus creating humanity from clay in Greek mythology. 

For more stories about Nuwa, please visit https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nu-Gua.

The Zodiac Rat and Cats- Chinese Myth

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 61
Occupation: Software Developer
Residence: San Jose, California
Performance Date: 02/12/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Story: “Before the Jade emperor announced his great race, the cat and the rat were best friends. After hearing that the race was going to happen soon, the cat and the rat made a pact to cross the finish line together. The cat was a frequent napper and very lazy, so he asked the rat to wake him up. The rat agreed. However, on the day of the great race, no matter how many times the rate tried, he could not wake the cat up. Because of this, he had no choice but to set out on his own and complete the race. Being a fast runner, he had no problem getting ahead of most of the other animals. The last part of the race was crossing a great river. Because the rat couldn’t swim, he in the ox’s fur and waited until the last second to jump across the finish line, beating the ox and earning first place. After the race, the cat woke up and realized that he had missed it. He thought the rat tricked him and purposely did not wake him up, so he chased the rat and tried to eat him. That is why cats hate rats ‘till this day and eat them.”

Background and Context: This is another one of the twelve stories told about the twelve different Chinese zodiac signs that serve as the symbols for each year in the lunar calendar. My father was born a year earlier than my mother in the year of the rat, and my mother was born in the year of the ox. My father told me this story of the rat after he told me about the story of the ox and I got curious about his zodiac sign. This happened when I went back home for dinner on Chinese New Year. My father heard this story from his parents and grandparents growing up in China. My father used this story to explain that people born in the year of the rat are very smart workers, much like the rat in the story. He compared it to the story of the ox, reminding He also used the story to explain why cats don’t like him and why he is allergic to them. 

Thoughts: After hearing the story of the rat, I still didn’t think much of the twelve Chinese zodiac myths. Although my mother is very hardworking and I’ve seen many instances of my father working smarter and not harder and teaching me to do so, I still think that these behaviors are coincidental. There are certainly instances of people born in the year of the rat being allergic to cats, and instances where people born in the year of the rat love cats and are not allergic to them. While the myth does hold a bit of truth, my interpretation is that any association of a behavior with a zodiac sign has to be true to some extent purely due to chance. However, I did observe that in Chinese culture, these myths are very important and that everyone I’ve known and met knows them. They are imperative to Chinese culture because of the many holidays and beliefs that are centered around them.