Category Archives: Tales /märchen

Stories which are not regarded as possibly true.

Sparrow’s gift

Nationality: Japenese
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: China
Performance Date: March 15, 2017
Primary Language: Chinese

A friend of mine, who’s an international exchange student from Japan now currently studying in China, contributes this story. She read this story from a Japanese traditional story book, but she says this story is actually quite well-known. We interviewed in Chinese so the following is only rough translation of what she shared.

Story:

”

There were two poor old women living as neighbors in the village. One day, one of the old lady found an injured sparrow in her yard, so she took in the sparrow and took good care of it. Everyone in her family as well as the neighbors laughed at her for “seeking for troubles”, but she ignored them. She fed the sparrow rice and water every day, and tended its wound with great care. Days after, the sparrow was fully healed and the old lady let it flew away. However, the sparrow came back a while later with some seeds in its mouth. The sparrow left the seeds to the old lady and took off again. The old lady took the seeds and planted it in her yard. The next morning, where she planted the seeds now there has fully grown trees of countless gourds. Each gourd was as huge as a human head. The old lady took a gourd and opened it — the gourd was full of rice! The overjoyed lady then shared the rice and her amazing story with the neighbors and friends.

The other old woman of course learned the story. Since her family blamed her for not able to do anything for them while the lady next door get herself and her family trees of rice, she decided to do the same thing — tend for the sparrows and get the seeds. For the next few days, she threw stones at the sparrows stopped by in her yard and successfully hit one. However, to make sure she would get the magical seeds, she continued to do so till she got three injured sparrows in total. She then tends for the wounded sparrows just as her neighbor did, and let them go once they were healed. The three sparrows did come back with seeds, and the old woman planted them in her yard as well. The next day, just as she expected, there grew trees of huge gourds. She took gourds inside with her family and cut them open, excited to store all those rice for themselves. However, it was not rice in it but poisonous snacks and bugs. The woman and her family were all bite and died.

”

Thoughts:

Animal tales seems to be popular i Japan. In fact, this informant shared several animal tales with me, and every each of these tales were seemed to aim at teaching people a moral lesson through animals — this story would be a lesson of not to be jealous and greedy but to be kind. The ending of the story seemed to be a bit extreme but I think only through exaggeration the folklore could send out the message and warn people. A funny thing is, there is a similar Chinese folklore that every thing is the same except the old women were brothers in the Chinese version.

The Tale of Nian

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Beijing, China
Performance Date: April 10 2017
Primary Language: Chinese

Background of informant:

My informant SS is an international student from Beijing, China.

The conversation was in Chinese.

Main piece:

SS: “Once upon a time, there was a village, and villagers were living happily together [Laugh]. One day, a monster whose name is “Nian” (means “year” in Chinese) came to the village and smashed people’s habitat. Something like that. People were so afraid of him. Nian came to the village and committed the massive destruction every year. Finally, the villager couldn’t bear Nian anymore, so they planned to fight back. I think, they went to ask help from an expert.”

SH: Aha!

SS: “This expert told the villagers to hang up red items on their house, like red Chinese couplets (Duilian), and also to light red firecrackers that has huge noise to frighten Nian. Because Nian was afraid of color red and loud sound. And the villagers did that and they successfully frightened Nian away. So every year in New Year Eve, which is the time when Nian comes to destroy, people would hang up red things and light firecrackers.”

SH: How did you know about this story? 

SS: “Elementary school textbook.” [laugh]

 

Context of the performance:

This is a section in our conversation about Chinese Spring Festival.

 

My thoughts about the piece:

When SS talked about the villagers went to find an expert, I reacted with an “Aha” since it reminds me of the help from a donor in Propp’s 31 functions.

The tale of Nian fits into Vladimir Propp’s 31 sequenced functions in tales. Just due to this performance that SS gave, it includes: 3 (Violation of Interdiction) –> 8 (Villainy) –> 9 (Mediation) –> 10 (Beginning Counter-Action) –>12 (First Fuction of the Donor) –> 14 (Receipt of a Magical Agent) –> 16 (Struggle) –> 18 (Victory).

Beside the structuralist approach to Nian’s story, I found the way that my informant learned about this tale somehow tricky. The tale was learned through “elementary school textbook”. Given the definition of folklore as the “official study of unofficial knowledge”, as since textbook, or school, or teacher are more as “official” concepts, this situation is problematic. And this is not the only case. During all of my conversations with Chinese informants, when I asked about how did they know about that folklore piece, the answer always has to do with school or other official institution.

La Descarnada

Nationality: Salvadorian.
Age: 37
Occupation: Housekeeper
Residence: Los Angeles, California.
Performance Date: 04/17/16
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: english

-La Descarnada (El Salvador)

Original script: “my grandfathers friend had a chilling experience with a beautiful and sensual woman who appeared in the desolate roads asking for a ride. When he asked where she was headed she said a few kilometers. Then she got in the car and began to touch and kiss him then something dreadful happened; the skin from her body fell off! He was found in a total state of confusion and a lot of people said La Descarnada is a bad spirit of a bad witch.”

Background Information about the Piece by the informant: Her grandfather believes the woman to be the witch “La Descarnada”

Thoughts about the piece: A lot of the Myths and tales from this area of the world seem to center around women and the evil behind there seductive powers. Perhaps they serve as tales of caution not to mess around with lose women or maybe deep down they express a fear of women.

 

Prince story

Nationality: American
Age: 33
Occupation: Photographer
Residence: Los Angeles, California.
Performance Date: 04/18/16
Primary Language: English

Informant:

Zack was born in Boston Massachusetts and grew up in a house in rural Norwell Massachusetts in a secular family. His father is a musician and his mother a homemaker. Zack is a photographer who works with musicians and has traveled extensively both in his childhood following his father on tour and in his current occupation.

Original script: There is a fable amongst the rock and roll world and its about prince. Prince was known even amongst the inner of inner circles that he was a puzzling guy. Story goes, a new guy gets brought on the road to be Prince’s guitar tech. If you have been hired to be princes guitar tech it mean you’re probably a great guitarist, that said everyone’s first day at work is nerve-racking. Show begins everything is going well, the guitar tech has done all the work he should’ve done, at this point of the night he hands princes his various guitars between songs. Half way through a particularly boisterous and well-lit performance of a song, prince signals off stage towards the tech to approach. The tech sheepishly crosses the stage and leaves in to prince to hear what the problem is; prince says two words, star wars. The tech retreats into the wings of the stage in a panic. He begins consulting his new colleagues about what star wars might be, is it an affect on one of his guitars, is it some sort of pyro technic happening that is coming. The guy starts freaking out. Finally a grizzled roady halts the tech in his track and asks “what’s the problem” the tech says “prince said he wants star wars, I don’t know what he means!” the roady laughs and says “oh man its ok, he just wants star wars playing on his tour bus when he gets off stage”.

Background Information about the Piece by the informant: This story is shared by roadies and other members of the crew that work for musicians. The informants work as a rock photographer places him in the situation where he hears stories like this one about the sometimes outrageous demands of rock stars.

Context of the Performance: This story is told in the close-knit circle of crew that work around and for performers.

Thoughts about the piece: The occupational folklore shared here is not focused on the artist but on the nerves experienced by the new member of the team who is a fish out of water. Prince the artist could be replaced with any over the top performer.

 

Big Cookie Hero

Nationality: American
Age: 61
Occupation: University professor
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: March 24, 2016
Primary Language: English

 

My informant is an American from Minnesota, who has ancestors from Czech republic and Sweden, back to 1880.

“My grandmother used to tell me a story of a big cookie that could roll around and have adventure.  Sometimes it was oatmeal cookie sometimes it was a chocolate chip cookie, but they would roll around have adventures, save kids…She may have the story come down from her ancestors. Sweets are big product in Sweden. She may possibly hear this from her mother. It was like a bed time story. The big cookie was the hero. He would roll down the streets and rescue a lot of stupid kids. I think the cookie did talk, say things like ‘you stupid kid, how did you stuck in the mud? how did you lock yourself in the room?'”

“My grandma, who lives in St. Paul now, she still always has a mass amount of cookies and pastry that she baked before we came. So much culture pass down through food. ”

As an animation filmmaker and teacher, Christine loves this kind of tales that she heard from her family, which has also inspired her a lot in her creation.

I think this kind of folklore tales is really playing a positive role in people’s childhood, which could make the children grow up happily and imaginatively.