Category Archives: Tales /märchen

Stories which are not regarded as possibly true.

Lạc Long Quân and Âu Cơ in Vietnamese Folklore

Main Piece:

AL: The tale of Lạc Long and Âu Cơ:

Lạc Long Quân was born in 2800 BC. He is the sun of a mountain god… and his mother is uh the sea god. His body is a dragon of some sort even though his parents… Was a sea dragon and his father the son of mountain… [He] was like a human-ish figure. His name, Lạc Long Quân, translates to Dragon Lord of Lạc. Lạc is a place in Vietnam…

Âu Cơ is the daughter of the northern chief… And fairy from the mother… Lạc Long Quân, the dragon, decided to take the form of a handsome man because he has that power, and Âu Cơ is a fairy. And so they married, and um *laughs* interestingly enough, Lạc Long Quân married the daughter but killed the father. I know. It’s weird… You would think that you shouldn’t kill the daughter’s father…

Anyway, so they had sex, and uhm she gave birth to a sack of a hundred eggs, and they grew into a hundred boys… Or children, depending on lore, and reestablished Vietnam. Uhm they say that all ancestors descend form these 100 children… Âu Cơ loved the mountain, so she really liked the north side. Lạc Long Quân loved the water because his mother is a water dragon… And so they decided to split the kids in half, or not in half— *laughs* divide the kids in half, fifty-fifty, and take them to either location… Half of them in the mountain and half of them near the sea… It was agreed by both parents that they would help each other in need. Lạc Long taught his children to fish and tattoo. Âu Cơ taught her children to farm and breed animals.

In Saigon, there are two streets who intersect. One is named Lạc Long, and one is named Âu Cơ, and they intersect because they’re married to each other… It’s very cute… Probably intentional… And then Lạc Long is known as the first king of Vietnam…

Context:

Taken from a conversation with my roommate in the Cale & Irani Apartments at USC Village. Him and I are of Vietnamese descent.

Analysis:

Myths are like adult versions of fairy tales. Historically, they have helped societies try to understand elements of the natural world or the scientific phenomena around them. Here, this myth plays into patriotic ideals in the founding of a nation and a unification between the rivalry of North and South Vietnam. These cross-generational stories are kept alive by the communities performing them. These two figures are so deeply incorporated into Vietnamese culture that there’s many pieces of art dedicated to them. In fact, there is a temple dedicated to the Dragon Lord. Furthermore, the intersecting streets are just further proof of how stories like these unify people through their collective imagination, childhoods, and rich cultural histories and beliefs.

Why Chinese People Have Short Names

Nationality: Chinese
Occupation: Barber
Performance Date: 4/28/22
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

This is a story that I heard from a barber when discussing folklore origins. S is a middle aged Chinese woman who used to live in China before immigrating to the United States.

S: There was one about a boy with a super long name who fell down a well and almost died because his name was too long. I think his name was “Tiki-tiki-tembo-no-sar-embo-charri-barri-boochi-pip-perry-pembo” or something like that. It was Chinese.. custom to say the full name of a firstborn child. So the boy with the long name had a brother with a short name, and they were playing next to a well by their house. The younger brother fell into the well, so the older brother ran to their mom and said Chang fell into the well! Oh, and Chang was the name of the younger brother.

Me: Oh nooo! Were they able to save him?

S: Yes! They got a ladder to help Chang climb out of the well right away and he was just fine. Then another day, the two brothers were playing next to the well again when this time it was the older brother who fell!

Me: (groans) come on guys, do better. Silly little kids!

S: So this time, Chang runs to his mom and tries to tell her that Tiki-tiki-tembo-no-sar-embo-charri-barri-boochi-pip-perry-pembo fell into the well. But since he ran there, he was so out of breath that he could only say tiki-tiki-tembo… before running out of breath. His mom was so intent on respecting her first-born son’s name that she would not listen until he was able to say (inhales largely) Tiki-tiki-tembo-no-sar-embo-charri-barri-boochi-pip-perry-pembo. Whew! That was hard hahha.

Me: (trying to say it with her) Tiki-tiki-tembo-no-sar-embo-charri-barii-boochi alala blehhh. I couldn’t imagine having a name that long. That must suck!

S: Yeah anyways, they finally got the ladder after Chang was able to pronounce his brother’s name, but he was basically almost drowned by this point. They were able to save him, but it took him a long time to recover. And that’s why Chinese people have short names!

Me: Wow, what a cool tale! I hope that the mom learned her lesson, that could’ve ended really badly.

The Lady of the Lady

TW: Mentions of suicide

Background

Informant is a friend of the mine and a freshman at USC. She is originally from Bethlehem in upstate New York. She does not have any religious affiliations nor ties to any ethnic subgroup within the United States or her specific region. She is referred to as “AK”.

Context

I asked the informant about any urban legends or ghost stories from their hometown.

AK: There was a lake nearby. And I remember going up to visit it for a friend’s birthday and her mom told us a story about how a lady committed suicide by rowing out into the middle of the lake. And then just, I think she must’ve had attached something to her, like a rock or something and she died and she was missing. And then 30 years later, scuba divers went down just to like explore the area and they ended up finding her body like completely preserved. And it looked like she hadn’t aged or like decompose, but when they touched her, she like floated and misted away. And then she was the lady of the lake after that.

Analysis

I asked AK about ghost stories or local legends as she is from upstate New York, and ghost stories are abundant in the Northeast. In this case, the lore of the “Lady of the Lake” is being passed down from a parental figure (although not AK’s specific parent) to children as a story. The origin and accuracy of the story are completely questionable, as there is no specific claim for either.

The Golden Arm

A is 54 years old. She was born in Ft. Waldon, Florida and moved to Sylvania, Georgia at 2 years old. She’d been there all her life until last year (2021). A has a thick Southern accent that’s very pleasant to listen to. She told me this story, or rather instructions on how to tell the story, in conversation. It’s a ghost story that’s meant to be performed around a campfire.

“There’s one that’s like an old campfire tale, if I can remember how it goes… ok so this woman had a golden arm and this man knew about her right, and he had plotted and planned on how to get that golden arm to sell it and make some money off of it so he went and… he went to try and get it from her while she was asleep and she woke up and he ended up killing her, well as the story goes he killed her, got the golden arm and buried her out in the woods by the swamp and he was… one night out with some friends talking and all of a sudden… after his friends had left… he kept hearing something and it was the woman saying “I want my golden arm…” and remember this is by the campfire and it’s dark so each time you repeat that line “I want my golden arm” you have to say it louder and louder (laughing) and then you pick someone that’s sitting near you and you yell out “you have it!” and grab ‘em! It scared the bejesus out of me every time I heard it! I was probably 13 when I first heard it, you know we went on family trips with friends… on weekend trips out by the river so… I used to tell it too.”

According to John Burrison (see Burrison, John A. (1968). “The Golden Arm” The Folk Tale And Its Literary Use By Mark Twain and Joel C. Harris. Atlanta, Georgia: Georgia State College. pp. 1–23) The Golden Arm or ATU 366 (see http://www.mftd.org/index.php?action=atu&src=atu&id=366) is a very old folktale that has been documented for 200 years but its oral tradition goes back further. The belief underlying the tale is that the dead “can find no rest until its physical remains are intact.” The lesson of the tale may initially have been respect for the dead, but variations have made it a cautionary tale about greed. There are many variations across different cultures where the missing item is not an arm, but some other body part. In media, the tale was told around a campfire by Andy Griffith in a T.V. show. A version similar to the one A told me was a favorite of Mark Twain’s and can be found in How to tell a story and other Essays (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3250/3250-h/3250-h.htm#link2H_4_0003) For more about Mark Twain’s version and a fun but somewhat unrelated story about a ghostly Twain and copyright law please see https://marktwainstudies.com/happy-halloween-twains-favorite-ghost-story-and-twain-speaks-from-the-netherworld/

Black Mariah

Content:

B: The only real thing that I really have was, uh, the story of Black Mariah that my mother used to tell and I had kind of forgotten a lot of the details. So I did reach out to, to uh, K, uh, my aunt who, uh, obviously was more familiar with it and remembered it because what it was was Black Mariah was supposedly a witch that lived under the steps of their house, the steps going up to the second floor.

Me: Where was this house?

B: In? Uh, Liberty. South Carolina.

Me: Okay. So it lived under the stairs to the second floor?

B: Yeah, the house still stands, but uh, and apparently, uh, she, she was used to, uh, threaten the kids by my grandmother. And after, after K told me this, uh, yesterday I remembered my mother telling me this, but it was used, uh, if you don’t behave, we’re gonna put you underneath the steps with Black Mariah. And so K said she wouldn’t even go upstairs because she didn’t wanna be around those steps. Now, when I came along, none of that was ever really still, uh, in play. I’d go to my grandparents’ house. And I went upstairs all the time and was never even, you know, it was never even talked about too much then, but Mom brought it up to me. Uh, and years later she’s, she’s brought, brought it up several times. And uh, one of the reasons that she brought it up was because one of my early bands, uh, before I ever moved away from home, we had called Mariah. And so she then brought up, uh, the Black Mariah story and was convinced years later in her old age. That is what we called the band black Mariah, but it was just Mariah, but it triggered that memory in her. And so she, she kind of associated it and uh, but that was the, that’s the story. And they, you know, apparently used it to keep their kids in line, I guess.

Background: B was born in Batesburg, South Carolina in 1960. This story comes from his mother and aunt, both of whom were born in Liberty, South Carolina in the 1930s. 

Context: This story was told to me over a phone call. 

Analysis: After hearing this story, I attempted to track down the origin of Black Mariah. The only thing that I could find that would’ve been around while the story was happening was the police vans that were sometimes called Black Mariahs in the south. Tom Waits acknowledged this naming of police vans in his 1985 song “Big Black Mariah.” I also tracked the name Black Mariah back to a move in poker, but it’s unclear when the poker term came to be. Later, Black Mariah would become a Marvel comic character, but only decades after the story takes place.