Category Archives: Tales /märchen

Stories which are not regarded as possibly true.

The bee and the orange tree

–Informant Info–

Nationality: French

Age: 47

Occupation: Teacher

Residence: Los Angeles, California

Date of Performance/Collection: 2022

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): French

(Notes-The informant will be referred to as DK and the interviewer as K)

Background info: DK is a mother of 1 who was born in the United States and moved to France when she was young, moving back to the US in 2017. She notes that she was told this story all the time but has not heard of it once in the US, and when she has brought it up to other people, they have never heard of it.

K: Ok so, what’s the name of the folklore, how do you know of it, and what’s the context of the performance? Like when is it told, under what circumstances?

DK: It’s called uh..The translation would be The bee and the orange tree. It was always told to me when I was little, in like school, or my parents and people like that. It’s kinda like Cinderella, you know? It was told like that.

K: Yeah that makes sense! Uh whenever…whenever you’re read you can tell the story.

DK: Ok. The story goes that there was this princess called uh Aimée who was lost after a ship wreck. She drifted to a little island in her crib, where a lot of uh…ogre’s lived. They only took her in because they wanted her to marry their son when she got older, normally they eat people who come ashore. When she was uh 15 I believe, she was told she would marry that ogre but the thought of that disgusted her. She went for a walk along the beach and found a man, who was actually her cousin, but neither of them knew that or could uh…say that. After a little while, the man, a prince, discovered who she was because she had a locket with her name on it. The little ogre said it was time for them to marry, and she fled but hurt herself on a thorn so she couldn’t walk. The prince went to find her when she didn’t show up and got captured. I don’t really remember the details here so I’m sorry

K: Thats alright! Just whatever you do remember tell me, even if its confusing

DK: Alright, uh so Aimee managed to trick some of the ogres into eating each other and found an uh magic wand somehow. Using it, she made herself speak the prince’s language and he told her everything. She used the wand again to distract the ogres and flee, but one of them followed them using his…magic boots. She would use the wand to disguise herself and the prince each time the ogre came close. She turned herself into a bee and the prince into an orange tree and stung the ogre, and in the chaos, the wand was stolen so they were stuck like that. Later, another princess fell in love with the orange tree, who was the prince. Aimee stung her out of jealousy, and the other princess ribbed a branch off the tree to defend herself, causing blood to flow out of the wound. Aimee left to fetch balm for the wound. A fairy came by while she was gone and detected the enchantment on the prince, turning him back. The prince explained the situation, and when Aimme returned the fairy uh turned her back also. They returned home to her parents and got married. The end *laughter*.

The king of ants

–Informant Info–

Nationality: Chinese American

Age: 27

Occupation: Student

Residence: Los Angeles, California

Date of Performance/Collection: 2022

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): Mandarin

(Notes-The informant will GT be referred to as and the interviewer as K)

Background info: GT is a Chinese American student who was born and raised in California. Both his parents were born and raised in a small town in China, which is where he knows this story from. He told me this story in his home during the daylight.

K: Uh…so what’s the name of the story, the uh context of the performance and uh where-or how do you know if it? Like who told you or where did you hear it?

GT: *laughter* sorry I’m like super awkward. Uh, it’s called 蚂蚁之王, which means like uh “The king of ants” in English, I think. It’s told just like an uh like a bedtime story, like a fairytale and I always heard it from my mom or grandma. Oh! Also like everyone has a pretty different version, the only real similarity is like the ants help someone out, so this is only my, uh my family’s version of the story.

K: Cool! That’s perfect actually, start whenever you want. And if you only know a word in Mandarin or whatever that’s fine I can translate later.

GT: Yeah ok so uh… it’s really simple. So there was this guy, Ho Kwan of Kuang Nan, and he was like super kind. Like Buddhist level kind. He had this big jar of silver he had been saving for like his whole life when one day a bunch of ants came in and ate part of the silver. Oh! The ants were also white, which is important. Anyways uh, the guys’ family wanted to take revenge so they found where the ants were living, and there were MILLIONS, and said they would destroy them. Ho Kwan said no and argued until his family eventually left, leaving the ants unharmed. Uh…then he had like a dream uh that night, and it was like super weird. *laughter*. So a bunch of soldiers dressed in white (emphasized word white while winking) escorted him through this like huge, magnificent, rich city to the king who was also dressed in white. The king thanked uh…Ho Kwan for sparing him and his people, and said like sorry for the other ants stealing his silver. He directed Ho Kwan to a tree and said there’s a big jar of silver uh buried there for him. So Ho Kwan woke up and meditated and dug up the dirt and realized that like there was silver there! The end *laughter*

Interpretation:
This was the first bit of Chinese folklore I had really ever heard and it was so interesting! I like the fact that there are so many versions of this same story, which isn’t surprising due to how physically large China is. I did a little bit of further research on some of the other versions of the story, and most of them were a man helping the ants in some way and later getting rewarded. Most of them included someone else trying to attack the ants and the man protecting them. I thought that especially was important to note. A lot of these stories originate from around the rise of Buddhism in China, so it makes sense that so many of these stories would include being kind to living beings that normally you wouldn’t think twice about. The reward also makes sense. Although not very Buddhist in teaching, the reward system in this story appeals to more people than a purely Buddhist reward, which one won’t see until death.

The sorcerer of the white lotus lounge

–Informant Info–

Nationality: Chinese American

Age: 27

Occupation: Student

Residence: Los Angeles, California

Date of Performance/Collection: 2022

Primary Language: English

Other Language(s): Mandarin

(Notes-The informant will GT be referred to as and the interviewer as K)

Background info: GT is a Chinese American student who was born and raised in California. Both his parents were born and raised in a small town in China, which is where he knows this story from. He told me this story in his home during the daylight.

K: So uh same questions. Name of the story, context of the performance, and uh…where did you hear it?

GT: Yeah, I remember. Its called 白莲山庄的巫师 or like…sorcerer of the white lotus lounge if I make it make sense in English. Uh so its another like fairytale I heard from my mom or like books and stuff

K: Ok neat, whenever youre ready

GT: Yeah ok uh so like…Uh, it starts with there was a very powerful sorcerer, who could use dark magic. He had pupils as he like taught them dark magic I guess. Anyways, he asked them to watch a covered bowl and to not uncover it but of course, the students did, and all that was in it was a little straw boat in clear water. They like messed with the uh boat, and it tipped over. The sorcerer came back and said he knew what they had did, even if they denied it. The next night he left them with an uh..a candle and told them to watch it so it doesn’t go out. They all fell asleep and it went out, and again they denied it but the sorcerer knew, and that like…scared the students. Later uh, one of them insulted him, so he turned him into a pig and sold him to a butcher who killed him like a butcher does to an uh pig. Anyways, that student’s dad found out so the Emporer arrested him and his family. As they were going up an uh…a mountain all of them, the soldiers and such, saw this huge tree with a giant mouth and eyes. The sorcerer said his wife could handle it, and she got eaten. He said his son could handle it and then he got eaten, then he begged to handle it, and then HE got eaten. The thing is, it was all a trick and the three of them got away scot-free. The end

K: Is there like…a moral to this story

GT: *laughter* you’d think huh? No, just don’t fuck with sorcerers I guess.

Interpretation:
This was an odd one. The fact that there’s no real moral, in fact, the “bad guy” got away with his deeds, was super interesting. Most other folklore and/or fairytales at least have the good guy succeeding, if not rife with moral teachings. I later asked for further clarification from the informant, and he told me that the sorcerer was part of the lounge of white lotus, as seen in the title. This lounge was, at least according to my research, a revolutionary society in China, so it makes sense that they’d go against the grain in who “won” in a fairytale. I also thought it was interesting that the sorcerer was meant be scary. The story did not shy away from making him the very obvious bad guy, at least by today’s standards. He turns one of his students into a pig and sells him to a butcher!

The Grateful Dead – Band Name Origin

Main Piece:

While with my dad, JK, listening to the Grateful Dead music in the kitchen, he asked:

JK: “Do you know how they got the name Grateful Dead?”

Me: “No?”

JK: “They were sitting at their house at 710 Ashbury, and they were called ‘the Warlocks’ at the time. Jerry turns to the others, ‘We’ve gotta name this band. The Warlocks aren’t a good name.'”

Me: “They were called that?”

JK: “Yeah. Stupid. So they open up this dictionary there and there was an item called ‘Grateful Dead.’ And it’s basically a story that’s present in a ton of cultures. They read it and were like, ‘Hell yeah man.'”

Me: “What’s the story?”

JK: “The common story is that there is a weary traveler that encounters the corpse of someone who never received a proper burial. And they didn’t get one because they had unpaid debts when they died.”

Me: “Does the traveler burry them?”

JK: “The traveler pays their debts and gets them the burial. Then, later in life, their life gets saved by the soul of that person. So the grateful dead are the protective spirits that have been earned through charitable gesture.”

Background:

The informant has gone to many Grateful Dead shows and stays very versed in the lore of the band, still being an avid listener. The story, however, seems to cary more weight for him because of the connection to the band rather than it just being a regular tale. It’s been enhanced for him because of it.

Thoughts:

Yet another example of music and musicians borrowing from folklore then creating a new interpretation of the lore. Examining the lyrics in Grateful Dead songs also shows many aesthetic parallels to this tale as they sing about being friends with the Devil’s friend, hauntings, and death (but all under an upbeat psychedelic rock tone). What’s interesting about this specific adaptation of the tale in borrowing the name of the subject of the story, it has made the tale more known, at least to me. For I would have probably never heard of such tale, if it weren’t for the Grateful Dead being tied to it.

Jewish Folktale: The Fools of Chelm Try to Capture the Moon in a Barrel of Water

Text:

LG: “In the town of Chelm, the people there were fools and one night they saw the moon in a barrel of water. So, they thought they would capture it, so they covered the barrel. So then, in the morning when they went back, it was gone. So, they thought it had been stolen, so they called the police. And the police came, and they had nothing to show them, so they all moaned and cried.”

Context:

The informant is my mother. She is a 57-year-old woman of Ashkenazi Jewish descent who was born in California and currently lives in New York City. Her father was a German-born Jewish refugee who escaped Nazi persecution as a child and her mother is the daughter of poor Russian Jewish immigrants. She feels very attuned to her Jewish heritage and culture and views this tale as an example of “shtetl humor.” She doesn’t remember where she first heard this story, but recently discovered an iteration of it in the writings of Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Analysis:

This folktale is one of many which discuss the Jewish town of Chelm, where “inhabitants acquired a reputation for being good and well meaning, though foolish” (Patai and Oettinger). I think this tale conveys some of the defining qualities of Jewish humor, which is often acerbic and endearingly critical, however, it’s not merely making fun of stupidity. As Raphael Patai and Ayelet Oettinger write, the foolishness in these stories “can be seen as a sort of backward logic that satirizes the process of Jewish theological reasoning” (Patai and Oettinger). In this instance, the people of Chelm’s effort to capture the moon is an allegory about faith, where God, like the moon, is astonishing and powerful, but elusive and cannot be physically captured. I think this story is also a critique of the hubristic desire to see God and understand divinity.

Citations:

Patai, Raphael, and Ayelet Oettinger. “Chelm, the Wise of.” Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions, edited by Haya Bar-Itzhak, and Raphael Patai, Routledge, 1st edition, 2013. Credo Reference, https://libproxy.usc.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/sharpejft/chelm_the_wise_of/0?institutionId=887. Accessed 27 Apr. 2022.

Another iteration of this folktale is given in a block quote which follows the third paragraph of this essay:

Rogovin, Or. “Chelm as Shtetl: Y. Y. Trunk’s Khelemer Khakhomim.” Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, vol. 29, no. 2, spring 2009, pp. 242+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A223824114/LitRC?u=usocal_main&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=65b43ad2. Accessed 27 Apr. 2022.