Category Archives: Tales /märchen

Stories which are not regarded as possibly true.

Heungbu and Nolbu

Background:

J. is a 20-year-old Korean-American college student currently studying in Los Angeles, California. She grew up her whole life in Alexandria, a suburban city in northern Virginia near Washington DC. She attributes her connection to her Korean culture through her family and regular engagement with Korean media.

Context: This Korean folk tale (märchen) is often told by parents, teachers, and older siblings to young children in a storytelling setting where siblings and peers sit together all at once to collectively hear it. 

Main Piece:

“흥부와 놀부”

Translation: “Heungbu and Nolbu”

“There are two brothers, Heungbu and Nolbu. Nolbu is the selfish, greedy brother, and Heungbu is like the good-natured, super nice, and generous brother. One day, Nolbu takes all the father’s inheritance and kicks his brother out, but Heungbu is too nice and says ‘I understand’ so then he becomes super poor, while Nolbu becomes super rich. Time passes by and one day, a small bird, a swallow I think, breaks its leg and falls onto Heungbu’s poor house. Even though he had nothing, he cured the bird and fixed its leg, giving it food and shelter. And it was like ‘thank you so much’ and left. When it returned, it dropped him a seed and gifted it to him. So he planted the seed, and out of the seed—a gourd seed—came jewelry and luxurious things that made him super rich. His selfish brother Nolbu, hearing that story, found a random bird and broke its leg, and did the same thing, faked and cured the bird. The bird came and returned him also a seed. And he planted that seed, and out came goblins and all these evil things that like wrecked his house, so he became super poor. Now the positions are switched, but Heungbu seeing that his brother was struggling, said ‘let’s live together’ and it ended up with a happy family situation.”

Analysis:

This Korean folk tale (märchen) carries messages of morals intended to be imparted from older, wiser figures to younger, more naive listeners. J. recalls learning to be generous as opposed to greedy from repeatedly hearing this story as a child, in multiplicity and variation depending on the storyteller because of the typical oral performance without specific reference to an authored literature. While the values of selflessness and generosity embedded in this folk tale are common to many cultures, certain details in the story make it specific to Korean folklore and culture. One of note is the cultural belief that gourds can magically withhold unknown treasures or horrors inside. In other words, gourds, apart from being a common vegetable food item, in this tale represent both sides of the human experience, reflecting the actions and ethics of those who plant them. As with many tales from other cultures, children who listen to this story by their elders become aware of real world rewarded values through fantastical suspensions of belief. Additionally, some of Propp’s syntagmatic structuralism and 31 functions (narratemes) appear in this tale like “14. Acquisition: Hero gains magical item” and “19. Resolution: Initial misfortune or lack is resolved”.

Annotation:

For another version collected by a South Korean scholar, see 

Kim. (2019). Aspects and Meanings of Narratives in “Heungbu and Nolbu” (1967). The Studies of Korean Literature, 64, 145–174. https://doi.org/10.20864/skl.2019.10.64.145

Tiger and the Persimmon

Text: A long time ago, a widowed mother and child lived alone in the mountain forest. At night, the baby would not stop crying. SO, the tiger that lives in the mountain comes out at night to look for food. He heard the baby crying and made his way to where the family lives. The mom could not stop the baby from crying, and the tiger saw that there was a mother and child in the house and wanted to eat them. The mom said.” If you don’t stop crying, I will give you the persimmon. The persimmon is dry and unpleasant. The tiger hears this and thinks the persimmon must be very scary because it stopped the baby from crying. But he does not know what a persimmon is. And the tiger ran away. And the baby stopped crying.

Background: K is a Korean American whose parents are of Korean ancestry. He is currently in college. He says that he had heard this proverb from his parents. This piece is memorable to him because his mother would tell him this story at night before bed.

Context: This tale came up during an interview regarding Korean folklore. This was told in English for ease of understanding.

This tale is used as a bed time story. As such, it is primarily targeted towards children. There could be many ways to interpret the message of this tale. If you look at it through the tiger’s point of view, the lesson of this story is to try to confirm something and not go solely off of rumors. In that the tiger of this tale came over to the house and was close to eating the family but was scared off by rumors of stuff that it did not fully comprehend. If it had individually assessed the situation, it would have walked away with a decent meal. If you look at the perspective of the mother, the moral of the tale could be that the protecting the child is very important and sometimes one must do stuff they don’t like to protect their family. But the moral takes a drastic turn if you look at the child’s point of view. In his point of view, the message is that you should not make much noise at night lest you attract the attention of a tiger or other scary creature.

Nail Soup

Basically, it’s about this homeless man, who, all he has in his pocket is a nail, right? So he’s walking around trying to get help from people and like ask them for food, cause he’s like all out on the street it’s like nighttime he’s hungry and he’s alone. So he goes to, door to door, and is just like “Hi can I have something to eat, Hi can I have something to eat,” and everybody shuts him out and then he get sup to this woman, and he knocks on her door and she wants him to get away, and then he tells her, um  … “I bet I can cook you the most delicious soup you’ve ever had with just this nail,” it’s just a metal nail, right? And she’s like, like “I don’t believe you” and he’s like “just let me try,” and so she does. So he walks inside, and he goes into her kitchen, and he gets a pot and fills it up with water, and he puts it in and it’s boiling, and he puts the nail in, and she sits down and they just start talking a little bit about themselves, but she’s still a little wary cause she doesn’t know, and as he’s cooking he’s just smelling it, and tasting it, and he’s like “mmm, this is really coming together”, and then he’s just like “ but you know what would go really good with this if you really wanna make this a great nail soup is some carrots.” And, so she’s like, “I have some carrots,” and so she pulls out the carrots and they cook it together and chop it up, put some carrots in the soup with the um, nail, and as he goes through he’s like, “You know, some celery would just make this great,” and after adding a couple more vegetables, potatoes, celery, obvious, all that stuff, um, he… talks to her and he’s just like, “You know, I’m getting really hungry. The best thing that you can do is just to like, dip some bread in the soup, and then it’s so good.” And so she pulls out this big loaf of bread, she’s like, “I have bread here,” and so she breaks the bread with him and they eat, dippin’ in together, and he, um … and they’re like having this great time, and he’s just like, “This always remind me of the times I used to eat nail soup and just have a nice glass of red wine,” so she pulls out the red wine, she pours them some glasses and she’s having a wonderful time with him, and they’re just talking about their history together and he’s like “Ok, soup is done!” And he slips the nail out, puts it back in his pocket, and then he brings the soup down, and they share the meal, and she’s like “I had such a lovely dinner with you, and it was just such a lovely meal, you should come back some time to make me nail soup,” and then they leave.

Background: This informant recalls being told this story as a child by her mother, who is Lebanese. She remembers not being able to spend much time with her mother, but each night hearing a children’s story before bed. She cites it as a Polish folk story. For them, it is a story about compassion and sharing, and the joy that comes with it. This informant has previously related to me that the sharing of food is very important to them, as well as important in Lebanese culture.

Context: This piece was collected during a conversation about childhood stories had on the inflatable mattress in our apartment living room.

My thoughts: When I was told this story, I half-remembered hearing a similar tale during my own childhood. Upon further research, I realized that the version I had been told was the “Stone Soup” oikotype, in which a stone takes the place of the nail. I agree very much with my informant’s assessment of the meaning of this tale. I’d be interested in learning more about why the soup in each version of the story starts with the ingredient it starts with.

For another version of this tale, see the following:

Yeats, William Butler (2010). The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol II: The Plays. New York City: Simon & Schuster. pp. 109–119. ISBN 978-1439105764.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Background: The informant grew up in Sleepy Hollow, New York, home to the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Context: I asked him about The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and he sent me a video telling it to the best of his memory.

“The story goes, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, there’s this place, like the pilgrims, ooo America, this undiscovered land, creepy, scary, lots of woods. There’s this one place called Sleepy Hollow, where it is now in New York. It’s haunted, there’s lots of ghosts there, it’s a quiet little grove, and then when you go in, there’s lots of spirits, it’s very scary. That’s the story.
That’s what’s happening there. But then scariest one of all, is supposedly there’s this guy called the Headless Horseman, who’s the ghost of a Hessian soldier during the Revolutionary War, whose head got shot off by a cannon, so at night he rides around looking for his lost head. And that’s the setting of the story. What happens is this guy named Ichabod Crane comes and he becomes a school teacher in Sleepy Hollow. He’s a very frail, skinny, skittish man, and after he teaches, he loves talking to the housewives about all the gossip, hearing all the gossip, and they start telling all these ghost stories. He is just so scared, he’s such a scared person- they really freak him out. He’s just living in Sleepy Hollow, hearing all these scary stories, being very scared.
He goes to this ball or something, or some town celebration, and he sees this girl who is the daughter of the wealthy family in town. I think her name is Katrina Von Tassel, and he instantly falls in love with her, I think wants to marry her, maybe he asks her to marry him and she’s like no. Whatever. So he’s beefing with this other guy, I don’t remember his name, he’s like the big man around town, he’s tall, strong, he’s like the manly man. They’re both fighting over Katrina. The other guy sees that Ichabod is into her and he doesn’t like that.
Later that night when Ichabod leaves the party to go home, he’s riding his old, slow, brown horse home through the dark woods at night in Sleepy Hollow. He hears a horse behind him. He’s looking, trying to see what it is, and then he sees this dark figure in the night. And it’s a black horse, and sitting on top of it is a man all covered in black with no head. He’s like ‘oh my god it’s the Headless Horseman!’ So he starts running, the horse is chasing him, he’s riding on his horse, the other horse is chasing him, they go over the famous Sleepy Hollow bridge, and then he’s like “aaa.”
The story ends and it’s basically up to you to decide whether that was the actual Headless Horseman chasing him or that was the guy who he was fighting with who also owns a black horse, who knows that Ichabod Crane is a scaredy cat, and was basically trying to intimidate him. “

Reflection: this legend reflects many of the values of the culture that produced and tells it. It tells that underdog stories are valuable–Ichabod is the protagonist, not the manly man. It also speaks to the fear of the unknown in Early America, and the nature of the Headless Horseman speaks to a trauma from war, in this case, the Revolutionary war. This legend is commonly known as an authored story written by Washington Irving. It has been told folklorically since it was written down, and it was likely inspired by folklore before it was penned.

For further reading, here is the text of Washington Irving’s story: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/41/41-h/41-h.htm

La Llorona

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Main Text

CE: “Essentialy El Paso kinda runs along this main river that borders Mexico and the United States, El Rio Grande. So there’s this really famous, um, old tale, kinda like a legend that exists, it’s called La Llorona. Um, it’s basically about…”

Interviewer: “And will you translate La Llorona please?”

CE: “Yes. La Llorona is like ‘the crier’ it’s a woman who just sobs and cries and, um. The story was an old woman who lives by the river and she, um, used to have a really nice farm and this beautiful garden and then a really tragic accident in the Rio Grande, she lost her son. He got washed up because he was playing to close to the water when it was high tide and so he ended up passing away and dying and so now every night if you go by the river, late at night, and the water is high you’ll hear her sobbing and crying for her son to return her. So, it’s all in Spanish, so she goes like *breathes* ‘Ay mi hijo’ just like really sad kind of like wallowing and depression, it’s a very sad story. Essentially just to encourage kids not to play by the water late at night or else they’ll get taken up by this, like, scary woman who’s, again, called La Llorona.”

Background

CE is a 21 year old Mexican/Colombian American from El Paso, Tx and is a third year student at USC studying urban planning. She first heard the story from her grandmother and mother growing up in El Paso, and said the tale was especially prevalent in her household because her home was so close to the Texas/Mexico border. It was used as an incentive not to travel too close to the border, which since her childhood has been a more dangerous region of her town.

Context

This story was told in CE’s household, and in other’s she says usually by a maternal figure to younger more impressionable children in order to keep them from straying too far away from the house and towards the river, and coinciding national border. The story only works as a deterrent if the children believe in and are afraid of La Llorona.

Interviewer Analysis

La Llorona follows a larger folkloric trend of children’s stories designed to protect them by preying on their fear of the unknown, or upon instilling that fear. By using a story like La Llorona or Hansel and Gretel, parents are able to use a terrifying fictional character to protect their children from perhaps less terrifying real-world threats such as wild animals or losing their way. Children are naturally curious and may not understand the dangers of the world, but will certainly be scared of a vicious monster that steals children and lives in the river. This story is told with good intentions by Latina parents and grandparents alike and is effective at achieving its goal, but this interviewer wonders if building a world view on fear of the unknown has detrimental consequences in the long run.