Category Archives: Tales /märchen

Stories which are not regarded as possibly true.

Leprechaun

Nationality: South Korean
Performance Date: 4-15-18
Primary Language: English

Main Piece:

 

Lee: The story of the leprechaun goes that they are little old men who wear green coats. They are like super mischievous. They are like little trouble makers. They work at making shoes and sell it for gold coins. The leprecoins (making a tongue twisted noise) the leprechauns all worked together for a really long time hid their gold coins in a pot. They then hid that pot at the end of the rainbow. The leprechauns hid the gold at the end of the rainbow so they could find it.That’s why people say follow the rain and at the end you’ll find a pot of gold.

 

Context: 

This piece of folklore was collected in a Taco Bell I work at. I asked my fellow employee if there were any sayings or proverbs that he knew. He gave me one and then after when we both took our breaks he told me this proverb. This time we were sitting down at a table in the dining area and eating.

 

Background:

Lee is a third generation American. However, his ancestral roots originate in South Korea. Lee is unaware of who he learned this folk belief from. He said he learned this tale from a book his mom used to read him when he would go to sleep. This tale hold sentiment to him for this reason.

 

My thoughts:

 

This particular tale also incorporates a bit of variation and a common folk belief. In different variations of this tale, the pot of gold created the rainbow. The folk belief incorporated is that there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

 

It is also interesting to see different folk beliefs for certain objects. For example, a rainbow is also believed to be a symbol from God saying that he will no longer flood the earth. It is a belied tied to Christian belief that Earth was flooded and the only survivors were those on Noah’s Arc.

German Märchen: Struwwelpeter

Nationality: American, German American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Belmont, California
Performance Date: 4/22
Primary Language: English
Language: German

Interviewer: Do you know any German fairy tales or lullabies that you were told when you were younger or when you’ve visited Germany over the years?

 

Informant: My grandfather used to read out of this story book when I was little and it was compiled of German folktales that centered around this one character, Struwwel Peter.  It is like really well known in Germany and it follows this guy who is like supposed to teach children life lessons in the form of tales. They are more like warnings, like if you do “this” then “something” will happen to you I guess.

 

Interviewer: Do you remember one of the stories or an example of the stories or lessons?

 

Informant: Well there was one that was told to me about Struwwelpeter when I was younger and it was that there were these children that were really young and still sucked on their thumbs.  And the parents or the group that was around them was trying to get them to stop or get them to grow up so basically Struwwelpeter turned into a “scissor man”.  I know it sounds really weird but that’s what it was about and it really freaked me out.  And the tale goes that if you were sucking your thumb then he would come and try to cut off your thumb as a punishment.  So he was basically like chasing kids who miss behaved or disobeyed their parents in some way.

 

Interviewer: Was it meant to be a scary story?

 

Informant: I don’t think so but German tales and stories really don’t mess around, like there is no beating around the bush with certain images or details. It’s all kind of very graphic and upfront.  But I didn’t really grasp how scary and graphic the stories were when I was little until I got older and thought about what they were actually saying and the concepts kind of started to freak me out.

 

Interviewer: Yeah just by you telling me the story I got freaked out and I can’t even imagine telling that to children but I guess different cultures and time frames use different folklore.

 

Informant: It was also really serious because my grandfather is really German and the rest of my cousins still live there so I knew he wasn’t messing around.

 

Interview: Well thanks for sharing!

 

Background: The informant is a sophomore in college student Linguistics with an emphasis in German.  Her extended family lives in Germany and she visits them every two to three years.  She has also spent time teaching English and learning German over the summer at a children’s day school in rural Germany.  To her, this piece is very characteristics of things she has learned and experienced through this particular culture.  Even upon this interview she asked first if I knew who the Grimms were and the stories they collected.  Tales for her are a signifying point.

 

Context: This interview took place while on visit to see the informant.  The informant first heard or experienced this piece from her grandfather who not only knew the tales by heart but had gotten her a book compiled of a collection of these stories that her family still has.

 

Analysis: This interview was extremely special because it was the first time I had asked someone for cultural products or folklore and they knew exactly what I meant.  It was also cool to see examples of things we had discussed in class and to meet someone who knew exactly what märchen were and the history of their culture, including the Grimms.  In hearing the piece I was also struck by the reality of it and the exclusion of filters for different audiences depending on age, but given the course, it makes sense that these tales would not be edited for children of the time if childhood was not an established concept.  The coming together of these different examples and theories is a really interesting process that has brought tangibility to the study of folklore.

 

Annotation: Documented versions of this piece can be found in Heinrich Hoffman’s book, Struwwelpeter: Merry Tales and Funny Pictures.

Hoffman, Heinrich. Struwwelpeter. G. Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1909.

German Märchen: Snow White

Nationality: American, German American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Belmont, California
Performance Date: 4/22
Primary Language: English
Language: German

Interviewer: Do you know any German fairy tales or lullabies that you were told when you were younger or when you’ve visited Germany over the years?

 

Informant: I know a similar version to the Grimms of Snow White.  I think it’s really popular for people who are German or those who live in Germany to know stories that come from Grimms.  A lot of other stories are based of that collection.

 

Interviewer: Do you have one that sticks out for you?

 

Informant: Yeah there’s one called Sneewittchen which is German for Snow White or what we know as Snow White.

 

Interviewer: How does it go?

 

Informant: So there’s Snow White and the Evil Queen in the beginning and then Snow White escapes to live with the seven dwarves.  But after the Evil Queen asks the mirror, who’s the fairest of them all and it says Snow White, she sends the Huntsman out to go and kill Snow White.  But instead of killing her, he kills a boar and brings back the heart as a way to trick the Evil Queen into thinking that Snow White is dead.  So time goes by, and then the Evil Queen asks the mirror again who the is the fairest of them all and it says Snow White again.  That’s how the queen finds out that Snow White is still alive and decides to go out and look for her.  So when she finds her, she tricks her into eating the apple and she actually dies for a short time and they place her in a glass casket.  The Prince is out hunting in the woods, when he discovers Snow White in the glass and kisses her.  She comes back to life and as they are planning to get married, the Prince realizes that the Evil Queen is the one who was trying to kill her.  So he captures the Queen and forces her to wear these pair of burning hot shoes while she dances in front of the whole court.  And the Prince makes her dance until she is eventually consumed by the heat and essentially burned alive. The Queen dies and Snow White and the Prince get married and that’s the end.

 

Interviewer:  That is a very interesting version and a really awful way to die if you were the Queen.

 

Informant: Yeah, a lot of the stories that everyone knows, especially the Disney version don’t include those kinds of details but the earlier version aren’t as censured.

 

Background: The informant is a college student studying Linguistics with an emphasis in German.  She has a large extended family that still lives in Germany and she visits every two to three years.  She has also spent time in rural Germany teaching English at a children’s day school as well as learning to better her German.  This piece represents a lot of similar stories she heard as a child and was unaware until she was older that other children were learning the same stories in different ways.

Context: This interview took place when the informant was visiting with the interviewer.  For the informant, this piece is something that she not only heard when she was little but also studied again in school when taking an upper level German course.

 

Analysis: With this piece, the informant and I talked a lot about the history of the story and the role the Grimms played in distributing the stories that circulated a lot in German culture.  For the informant, the Grimms were almost a form of national pride and I found that really interesting.  Despite, that to an outsider like me, these stories seem gruesome and dark, to her it is an identifying mark of the history of her culture. It also brought to mind some ideas that we discussed around tourism and the way that the visited culture can be both proud and somewhat embarrassed by the things that make them stand out to other people and for me the Grimms tales seemed like a prime example for this informant.

 

Annotation: Other versions of this story and other like it can be found in

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Kinder- Und Hausmarchen. G. Weise, 1860.

Sunday Drives

Nationality: American
Age: 49
Occupation: Unemployed
Residence: Temecula
Performance Date: 4/8/18
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: CR: Grandpa worked 6 days a week and Sunday was his only day off. It was important for him to connect with his family. If you stay at home, I’m off playing with a friend or watching TV, or grandma is asking him to clean the garage, so all four of us would load up in the car and we would drive. And we would just go. Sometimes we’d drive to the desert, sometimes to the mountains. But it wasn’t about the destination. Sometime we’d stop and get a meal, sometimes a soda, look at something interesting, but we weren’t driving for the sake of going somewhere, we were driving for the sake of four people in a car, sharing space and talking. And I hated it, because I’d rather be playing with my friend!  But now as a parent, I can see why they did that That was his way of keeping connected with his family every week. When you and I would go visit Aunt A, that was important, because it waa just the two of us, talking and laughing. And then also, your first year of college! I know i would come pick you up and you were always normally not feeling good, and then when we’d be sitting in traffic for 2 ½ hours sitting that we would have some time together. I think those times in cars as being time to connect. I will extrapolate more even! When you were a baby you would talk and talk and talk, and in the backseat, and I’d have to say to you, “no talking in the car because I’m driving, no talking in the car.” And then I did have a point where I thought to myself, “I have to stop saying that because i don’t want you to think there’s no talking in the car because isolated car time is perfect time for interactions!”

 

Context: Sunday Drives were taken every Sunday, in both CR’s childhood and in her daughter’s childhood.

 

Background: Sunday Drives were an important part of CR’s relationship with her parents as she was growing up, and so when she grew her own family she knew that this tradition was just as important to her as it was to her father.

 

Analysis: Sunday Drives are a typical thing in the American culture; the housewife has been home cleaning all week, her husband has been working 9-5 Monday through Friday, and Sunday is his last day off before he goes to work, before the kids go back to school, etc. Across families, this tradition of taking a family trip to nowhere in particular, or driving just for the sake of driving, is a huge piece of folklore in America. For CR’s family, both as she was growing up and as she was raising her own daughter, these regular drives were so important, as they were time when you were sort of forced to be with your family, you were supposed to bond and have conversations and laugh, and you got to spend a whole day together without any distractions.

 

For another version of this tradition, see CBS News.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/a-history-of-sunday/

 

Grandpa and the Friendly Ghost

Nationality: American
Age: 49
Occupation: Unemployed
Residence: Temecula
Performance Date: 4/8/18
Primary Language: English

Main Piece: CR: So, I’m not sure if the ghost came with the house in Winchester because after I finally told Grandpa about the ghost he then told me that the house I grew up in also had a ghost, so I don’t know if its a new ghost or like a continual ghost, but um, yeah there was the two specific things that happened! So we had bookcases in the den, built in bookcases that had books and knick knacks, so one day sitting in the living room I can see the den, out of the blue one of the knick knacks, a little fairy, literally falls off the bookcase on to the ground. No animal had walked by, nothing had happened. So I went to pick it up, and I put it back and I thought “well, maybe it was just learning funny, maybe it got bumped and finally fell off” so I put it back. I sat back down. Within a couple of minutes, from that same area on the bookcase, a book fell off and hit the ground. That’s the one that freaked me out because there’s no way a books just gonna fall off and hit the ground from the same area that that fairy was! In addition, things would go missing forever, we’d look and look and look for something, and a week later bam it’s just sitting there where we had looked 47 times, and I also would notice little peripheral lights in certain areas, and i’d look and it would go. So that’s when I made a deal with the ghost, I said “you can stay, but you cannot freak me out!.” and so I feel that when we moved to the first condo, I feel it came with us, because I still had the lights and things would still go missing, BUT when we moved to the second condo was within a few months of grandpa dying, and I have had very little issues at the new condo, so I don’t know if Grandpa is running interference with us with this ghost.

 

Context: These ghost sightings were noticed years ago, in an old house which happened to live in a city with a lot of Native American culture.

 

Background: CR tends to believe in these things: she meditates, she collects healing crystals, and she firmly believes that this ghost was real. She just as firmly believes that her father, after he died, has sent signs to her and has possibly protected her from this ghost.

 

Analysis: Ghosts are always interesting, especially when dealt with from the perspective of someone who firmly believes in ghosts. It seems difficult to find any sort of logical explanation for CR’s items falling off of her shelf other than a ghost, as books flying off shelves just isn’t something that regularly happens. The most interesting part of this story, however, is when CR mentions her father; it is definitely worth noting that her father died around the same time that her ghost stopped making problems for her– perhaps the ghost was tied to her father, since he mentioned that they definitely had a ghost in her childhood house. Perhaps the ghost was helping her recently deceased father get situated. Or perhaps, as she said, her father is out there, protecting her from this ghost that just wants to knock things off of shelves. Her firm belief in the presence of this ghost, and the relationship of the ghost to her father, is what makes this story truly unique.