Category Archives: Myths

Sacred narratives

The Haunted Art House in Woodneuk

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 84
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Malay, Hokkein

Context

My grandmother enjoys telling us stories of Singapore when she was younger, one of the stories she most enjoys telling is that of the haunted art deco house at Woodneuk. This story came about during one of our conversations.

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Performance

The following is translated and transcribed from a story told by the interviewee.

“When you go behind Holland Road there’s the old mansion. Now everyone goes there and takes photos but last time no one went there because it was haunted. It’s still haunted, but nowadays no one cares, no one respects the place. It’s an old house build for the Sultan a hundred years ago. The house was very big for time, and it meant to be a beautiful place. The Sultan had a Scottish wife, but when she died, he left the place, and he never bothered to go back. So it just sat there. And the place is haunted, the wife never left the house because she loved it so much and never wanted to leave it. But now kids go there and take photos and they are disturbing the wife.”

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Analysis

This is a fairly common ghost story told in Singapore about the abandoned mansion. There aren’t many abandoned buildings in Singapore as it is a small city with limited space and the government is proactive in ensuring that all the space available is used. Thus, the very abandoned places like the mansion in Woodneuk have many myths and tales surrounding it. Historically, the story is accurate. There was a Sultan with a Scottish wife that build the mansion, though the story gets a little blurry with whether the wife died and why the Sultan left the house. I think in the case of the Woodneuk mansion, the ghost story was put in place to scare people away from visiting it. My grandmother was frustrated with children going there to take photos and felt that they should’ve just left the house alone. The architecture in the house is traditional and unique and it would stand that there are those that would hope to protect it. However, because the government does not protect the house and make it a cultural landmark, people have spread ghost stories in an attempt to keep people away. In the age of social media and with the new generations believing less and less in superstition, this no longer works effectively. And instead, the idea that the place is haunted actually drives people to go visit it.

Confinement for New Mothers

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 84
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Malay, Hokkein

Context

Confinement is still a common practice in Singapore. It is when a woman who had just given birth must do nothing but rest for at least a month. My grandmother often brings up the lack of her confinement period to reference her now unhealthy state. The interview takes place as I get my grandmother to recount my mother’s confinement period.

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Performance

The following is translated and transcribed from a conversation between me, (M), and my grandmother, the interviewee (I).

M: What did you do when my Ma was pregnant with me?

I: Your mother had to stay at home. She couldn’t leave the house and must stay in bed.

M: Why did she have to do that?

I: After you give birth. A lot of your energy is taken away from you. And you lose a lot of important nutrients. So, you must stay at home and drink herbal drink. It is called zuo yue zi. Your mother had to be at home and lie on the bed for one month.

Translation: Zuo Ye Zi literally means Sitting The Moon, or sitting on the moon. Referring to how mothers who had just given birth must do nothing but sit and rest.

M: Did you also have to do confinement when you gave birth to my mom?

I: At that time I was too poor to afford a confinement lady. And I’m not lucky like your mother, my mother has passed away already so I couldn’t do confinement properly. I only did about ten days for each child then I had to go back to work. That’s why I’m so sick now,  I have very bad immune system. So when your mother gave birth, I made sure that she did at least one month, I wanted her to do more but she didn’t want to. I was already quite lenient with her.

M: What would have been a stricter confinement period?

I: I wouldn’t have let her shower if I could. When you shower you take away all the energy that is helping to rebuild your body. But she insisted on getting to shower, so I let her shower with warm water. And she only drank half of the tea I made for her, she didn’t finish it all. She won’t be very healthy when she is older. But I tried my best.

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Analysis

This is an old wives tale of why women must be pampered and taken care of after they had just given birth. This belief comes from Ancient China where women of rich families had the luxury to stay in bed and care for their health, and in many ways flaunt that they did not need to do any work after they had given birth. Today, many Chinese people in Singapore still believe in confinement, though not to the same extreme extend of the woman never being able to leave the bed, but rather that the woman should be able to just rest at home for a month without doing anything. I think that on a personal level for my grandmother, she uses this belief to explain her sickness right now. Though there are many medical explanations such as her old age, and just generally her immune system perhaps is not as strong as other people her age, she uses the fact that she wasn’t given the proper care when she was a young mother for her illness now. I think this gives her a sense of comfort because she can put the blame on something else, and pinpoint a reason for her illness rather than just accept that in a world of chaos, perhaps she was just unlucky in health. I believe that it is also a way in which she shows care for her daughters. Due to traditional beliefs, a lot of the love and care went to my grandmother’s two sons, and not much to her daughters. And it is perhaps through taking care of her daughters through confinement that she is able to show them that she loves and cares for them deeply.

Tekong Stories

Nationality: Singaporean
Age: 65
Occupation: Property Manager
Residence: Singapore
Performance Date: 04/12/2021
Primary Language: English

Context

Ghost stories or Tekong Stories as they are commonly known in Singapore are very often passed down in families or during military service. In Singapore, where there is mandatory national military service for every eligible male individual aged 18, ghost stories in the army camps are thus incredibly common and circulate widely around the community in Singapore. The following ghost story comes from my father recounting a ghost story he was told when he was serving the military in Singapore.

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Performance

The following is a story told to me by the interviewee.

“One of the Tekong stories is about a young girl and her grandmother that walk around the bunks and count the number of sleeping recruits. The grandmother is teaching the girl how to count. And they will count one… two… three… four… And as they come closer and closer to your bunk you’ll hear the number louder and louder five… six… seven… eight… And you cannot open your eyes because if you do they will take you away with them.”

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Analysis

Ghost stories are very common, but what specifically is unique about this one is that it is a military ghost story. Singapore practices mandatory military service for every eligible man, and thus military stories are much more widespread in the everyday community than it might be in other countries. Almost everyone knows of some kind of army camp ghost story, male or female. This ghost story in particular is given to new recruits. I belive it is meant to instil fear and make sure that the new recruits go to sleep instead of waking up in the middle of the night and trying to talk to each other.

Menil the Moon Maiden

Nationality: Cahuilla and American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Southern California
Performance Date: 5/1/2021
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

I: It’s a very complex story, but in it, Menil is a beautiful woman who… like brings the Arts and lots of teachings and lessons to people, and how to live, how to be, in like the beginning of the world. And people love Menil, and then there’s also this figure, that is sort of… like– he’s like a demi-god almost? Like a very powerful not-human being who created the world but he’s not the Creator– if that makes sense– but like who created a people at least– and his name is Mukat, and Mukat… essentially like, he’s really enamored with Menil, and then he pretty much rapes her, kind of, in the night. And then when she discovers what happened– I think she was sleeping– she disappears, and the people are so upset, and they’re like, “That’s awful, what happened to her?” And then when they find out, they kill Mukat because that’s like an unforgivable sin. In these stories, what’s so complex is like nothing is evil and nothing is good, like, right and wrong don’t exist in like the Western way that we think of them now. Like, Mukat does terrible things, but he’s not an evil being. He exists to teach almost as Menil exists to teach. And so, the people kill Mukat, and then they look into the lake where Menil used to teach them how to bathe and things, and they see her reflection and then she becomes the moon and she she won’t ever come back now, she’s the moon forever, and she’s no longer a woman.

Background:

My informant is a good friend from high school. She is a part of the Cahuilla and Chippewa Indigenous Nations and explains this traditional creation myth of Menil the Moon Maiden. She explains that her father knew this story, but she did not learn the long-form of it until she found documentation of an oral telling of the legend. She tells me that this telling was one of the more traditional forms of the story, but expresses how the accuracy is hard to determine because it was told in English. She tells me that she believes it may have been told in specific contexts at one point, but because there are so few surviving Cahuilla stories, they are told whenever they can be. This story has personal significance for her because the disappearance of Menil is reminiscent of the relevant issue of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, a cause that my informant has been actively doing work to raise awareness and action for.

Context:

This is a transcript of a conversation between my friend and I over the phone. I have talked to her a few times about my folklore class and explained the collection to her. She was happy to help and talk about some of her traditions.

Thoughts:

I love this folk myth because I appreciate how the concepts of complete “right and wrong” and absolute “good or evil” are not ideas that exist in Cahuilla culture, as they are conversely prevalent in many Western stories. This aspect of the myth is an important element to consider, as it can point to how members of this culture view and understand life. My friend tells me that this myth is not told to emphasize any lessons, and thus, listeners may not even understand any of the teachings until years later. This is how it is supposed to be told, she explains, so people may form the significance of the story themselves. While this story is a creation myth, the forms of narratives may be different from person to person depending on what levels of belief they hold to the story. Thus, as my friend explained, because this story is now often told just to keep the tradition alive, to some, it may be a legend or a tale.

Creation Myth of Vietnam: Sự Tích Bà Âu Cơ

Nationality: Vietnamese-American
Age: 81
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Iowa
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: Vietnamese

Main Piece:

G:  Bà Âu Cơ, nghe nói là đẻ ra một bọc. Trong bọc nó nở một trăm cái trứng. Ông Lạc Long Quân lấy bà Âu Cơ, get ready với bà Âu cơ. Đẻ ra một trăm trứng. Một trăm trứng đó nó ra một trăm người con. Những người con đó, sau lớn lên, mỗi người… lớn lên thì mỗi người ngự trị một vùng… giống người ở bắc, người ở nam, người ở trung, người thì ở xa xôi trên rừng núi, còn người thì xuống biển. Năm mươi người con lên rừng, và năm mươi người con xuống biển. Tức là vùng biển. Rồi mới sinh ra những người trên rừng đó thì mới lập ra những, cũng như là vùng thượng du, rồi cao nguyên, này kia. Năm mươi người con xưống biển, thì ở những cái vùng thấp đồng bằng giống như mình. 

  • Translation: “Lady Âu Cơ, I heard that she birthed a pouch. Inside the pouch was one hundred eggs. Sir Lạc Long Quân married Lady Âu Cơ, get ready with Lady Âu Cơ. She gave birth to one hundred eggs. From those one hundred eggs emerged one hundred children.  Those children, when they grew up, each child… when they grew up, each child came to rule a certain area… like the people from the North, people from the South, people from the central area, those people split up far from each other, some living in the jungle while others lived by the sea. Fifty people went to live in the jungle, while fifty people went to live by the sea. That is the sea. When the children were born and came to live in and rule the jungle, they established the Northern region, then the highlands, and things like that. Fifty of the other children who lived by the sea, established the lowland Delta region who we are today.

Background:

My informant is my grandmother, who was born and raised in Vietnam. She grew up in the Delta region of Vietnam, and first heard pieces of this creation myth from her father (my great-grandfather), but learned the long-form written version while she was in school. She explains that her father was told this story by his father, who was told the story from his father, and onwards. It is a story that is thus passed down from generation to generation, but also became a part of Vietnamese history taught in schools when my grandmother was in third grade. She likes this story because of the fond memories she has attached to it.

Context:

This is a transcription of a live conversation between my grandmother and I. I have been able to visit her from time to time during the pandemic and recorded this conversation during one of those visits.

Thoughts:

The creation myth of Lady Âu Cơ can be complex and complicated, and this telling of it is a very simplified version of the myth. Many other details regarding the relationship between Âu Cơ and Lạc Long Quân were not included in my grandmother’s telling of the myth. One element that is not clearly explained is how Lady Âu Cơ is a fairy deity, while Lạc Long Quân is a dragon deity. Their separation then is due to the difference of their needs; Âu Cơ wanted to live in the mountains while Lạc Long Quân needed to live by the sea. Despite the simplicity of this telling, most of the main points of the myth are covered. That is, eggs often appear in creation myths due to their symbolism of life. Such is the case with this myth, in which the first people of Vietnam emerged from one hundred eggs. I love this story because it captures how different groups of Vietnamese people (those from the Delta and those from the Highlands) came to be through a loving relationship between two deities. One note to make about myths and legends is how their classification depends on the storyteller’s belief. For my grandmother, this is a sacred creation myth that details how the Vietnamese people came to be. For me, who was not raised with the story, it is more of a legend.