Category Archives: Tales /märchen

Stories which are not regarded as possibly true.

“How the Tortoise’s Shell Cracked”

Nationality: Nigerian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 10, 2018
Primary Language: English

Stanley Kalu studies screenwriting at the University of Southern California. He is originally from Nigeria, but has moved several times throughout his life. He spent a significant portion of his life in Nairobi, Kenya and now lives in Los Angeles, California. He recalls hearing a number of stories as he grew up; many of these stories conveyed moral lessons and were told to younger audiences. In the excerpt below, Stanley recounts a folk tale he heard as a child:

Stanley: “So back when I was young, my mom would tell me a story of how the tortoise got his shell cracked. And the story went like this: the tortoise, being the most intelligent animal in the animal kingdom, during a drought said ‘hey birds, let’s go to heaven. You can fly me up there and I’ll talk to God, and everything will be fine, we’ll all get food, it will be fine. But in heaven, we’ll all have different names. So my name will be all of you, right? My name will be all of you.’ And the birds agreed, so they flew him up to heaven. And then, they were talking to God, who brought a huge feast with him. And then God said, ‘this food is for all of you,’ and the tortoise said, ‘oh, that’s me!’ so he ate all of the food, and all the other animals got upset. So, they left him in heaven and he had no way of getting back down to Earth. So he had his wife place a soft pile of feathers on the ground to break his fall, but he missed. Then he cracked his shell and he had to piece it back together. And that is how the tortoise got his cracks.”

Isabella: “Does that communicate any sort of moral lesson?”

Stanley: “Yes—don’t be sneaky.”

The transcript above details a Nigerian folk tale. Stanley recounted the story as we sat at a café after class one day, and he appeared to have the story committed to memory entirely; this suggests that he heard the story frequently as he grew up. The tortoise story warns against deception and “sneakiness” by illustrating the consequences of such behavior. It serves as a template for other tales—the message is universal in a sense and the motifs are interchangeable.

Blåkulla

Nationality: Swedish
Age: 49 and 50
Occupation: N/A and Business Leader
Residence: Palo Alto, California
Performance Date: 04/23/18
Primary Language: Swedish
Language: English

Background information:

My mother and father introduced me to this piece of folklore when I was younger. They were both born in the suburbs of Stockholm, Sweden and have been raised in the city suburbs by parents that were all from the inner city of Stockholm.

 

Main piece:

Literally translated, “Blåkulla” means “blue hill” in Swedish. This piece of folklore is about the location of Blåkulla and witches, and how these two are in relation to one another. Blåkulla is a place in Sweden where all of the witches in Sweden supposedly meet up to celebrate the Sabbath of the witches. To get to Blåkulla, these witches traveled on broomsticks, so in order for the witches to be unable to travel to Blåkulla, people often hide their broomsticks and all of the supplies that can make broomsticks. Essentially, my parents explained that the witches travel to Blåkulla three days prior to Easter, on the Thursday, and therefore, everyone does what they can to stop the witches from going to Blåkulla on this day. In addition to hiding brooms and supplies, Swedes traditionally create fires or make loud noises outside to scare the witches and prevent them from engaging in the witches’ Sabbath at Blåkulla.

 

Personal thoughts:

My family has never been religious so my parents taught me this tradition in regards to it being just that: a tradition and not an event that was celebrated in respect to Christianity and Easter. When I was younger, I was very interested in witchcraft and thought this was a very exciting time of the year, and therefore associated Blåkulla with Easter instead of focusing on Easter in regard to Christianity.

The Kojiki

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: USC Student - Interactive Media
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/21/18
Primary Language: English

Transcription:

Interviewer: “So I’ve been told that you read something called the Kojiki. What is that?”

Informant: “Uh, it’s the first collection of Japanese myths, collected by …the…uh…one of the first government systems of Japan.”

Interviewer: “And how much of it did you read?”

Informant: “A decent portion. There’s kinda a lot of myths. Um…you don’t need to read it. They’re told somewhat chronologically um…but there’s dispute whether some myths come from different parts of Japan that were readapted to serve um…the main – the center of Japan like the Yamato region better. Um… so some of the myths are disputed in how they actually fit in the story but…um… I’ve read a decent number of them. There’s a couple of- there’s a lot of the Kojiki that just tells about the emperors in order and a lot of it get repetitive. They go somewhere, they conquer some new people and onto the next emperor.”

Interviewer: “Are the stories in the Kojiki realistic or are they more…fantastical?”

Informant: “Um…they get more and more realistic…as you go on. Um… it seems the idea is it starts with the most powerful beings and as they die off, more and more of the stories are about more humanesque characters if not humans themselves. SO it goes from being about like the gods Izanagi, Izanami, and their children to eventually being about the human emperors of Japan. It has fantastical elements but they seem to be more allegories of potentially real history. There’s a group of people described as the tsuchigomu- tsuchigomo, which are supposedly earth spiders which don’t actually exist as far as I’m aware of. I don’t think there’s spider people living in the earth but…it’s possible that it’s an allegory for an actual clan, like a group- or like a tribe that used to live in Japan. They probably lived in one of the more mountainous regions that was uh subjugated by one of the emperors.”

Interviewer: “When did you read the Kojiki?”

Informant: “I read it for…uh…a general ed course here describing-or talking about Japanese folklore and how it relates to older and then more contemporary Japanese works of fiction. So…um…uh older novels like the Goddess Chronicle um…and newer books, older movies uh…Tales of Moonlight and Rain is an older movie that draws a lot on Mythology and up til recently, movies like Paprika and Pampoco and um…much of Ghibli films.”

Summary:

The informant talks about the Kojiki, a Japanese text that contains many folk stories and some history of Japan. It contains stories that sound like your typical myths and more realistic stories as well. Some of the more fictional sounding stories likely have roots in real events. The folklore of Japan has also found its way into a lot of Japan’s media. This includes movies such as Spirited Away. I’m very interested in reading the Kojiki as I find Japanese folklore to be a very interesting topic.

The Disappearing Boy

Nationality: African American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC Student - Interactive Media
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 4/24/18
Primary Language: English

Transcription:

Interviewer: “I heard you have a Boy Scouts story.”

Informant: “Oh yeah. Oh yes. Okay. So back in…back when I was much smaller I was part of the Boy Scouts um… in my district while I was still living in Memphis, Tennessee. As I was in elementary school I joined the Boy Scouts and did a couple of things with them. And one day we had this camping trip. SO we went to some camping sight that wasn’t really that populated and we stayed there one weekend. So, the first night that we stayed there, the um… the entire troop was walked out to this lake in the middle of the forest near the camping site. And as we were brought there, we were told this story about a boy that was also a Boy Scout around the same age as us at the time. He uh…apparently was bullied a lot by other Boy Scouts as well as his peers in school.”

Interviewer: “Do you know why he was bullied?”

Informant: “I don’t remember the details on why exactly, just that he was weird or different. Um…and so from what I remember, the story goes that he was pressured into visiting that very same lake that we were next to by…a bunch of the…a bunch of his peers that were bullying him and antagonizing him. So…apparently one night he did go out to that very lake and he never returned. And that was the end of the story. They never explained what it was that happened to him. He just went out to that lake and was never seen again.”

Interviewer: “And were yall allowed to swim in the lake?”

Informant: “We were not allowed to swim in it. We were only allowed to get somewhat near it. Oh  but that reminds me that we were not allowed to get within a certain distance of it.”

Interviewer: “Do you think that this story could’ve been told to keep yall away from the lake?”

Informant: “It’s definitely possible. In fact, the more I think about it, very likely. But there was always this kind of eeriness to the story that I always enjoyed. Just the not knowing. I guess it makes sense that they kinda left us in the dark though. Maybe if we had been told that oh something pulled him in, our curiosity my spike us to go in. But at the same time, not telling us at all could spike curiosity as well. So I’m not sure. I just uh…I just always enjoyed the open ended-ness of the story.”

Summary:

When the informant was in Boy Scouts, he was told a story. His troop leader took his group to the lake and told them the story of a boy who visited the lake and disappeared. The reason for his disappearance is unknown. I personally think that the story was made up to dissuade the children from going near the lake. I don’t know if the story was necessary or even made a difference but it is still remembered and retold.

THREE KINGDOMS

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 22
Occupation: Musician
Residence: California
Performance Date: 4-23-2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

THE THREE KINGDOMS

 

Main Piece:

 

Everywhere. Even before learning about it in class it’s in video games, TV series – there’s a TV series about it new every year, every 4 years a new movie about it, all over Asia, Japan, Korea, etc.

 

Romance of the Three Kingdoms – embellished story of true events that happened way back when China was warring states. This is the coolest story of China’s cyclical warring period. Very epic and a romance, and brotherhood, and betrayal, poor person becomes king.

 

Very exciting story, that’s why everyone likes it, much like Game of Thrones.

 

Background Information:

Why do they know this piece?

Used to play a game called Dynasty Warriors – you choose a kingdom to represent and you go through the storyline. You fight as these warriors and these characters are copied from the novels, their mannerisms, personalities, etc., very popular because they have very defining characteristics – such as the brute, the cunning spy, etc.

 

Later learned about the story in high school – everyone has to learn it in China – in excerpts – examples of the Three Kingdoms are used in everything, much like Confucious.

 

Where/Who did they learn it from?

School / Video Games / everywhere in the culture.

 

What does it mean for them?

Makes him very proud to be Chinese because it is a very badass story and very inspiring, so much cool things happened, and the decisions and courses of actions are all still accurate and reflect the emotions of the characters….overall very inspiring and just a damn good epic.

 

Context of Performance:

Sitting inside friend’s room just talking.

 

Thoughts:

 

Similar like the Chinese folklore of the Monkey King, I also learned about the Three Kingdoms from a video game – although it took me a very long time (probably more than 8 or 10 years) to realize that there is actually a history, a real history to the game – that all of this is based on a very real historical account of what actually happened in the past.

 

Again, it is interesting to see how even at childhood, we can have indirect contact with folklore through say, video games (which are based on on the cultural need to pass down folklore/culture, but from a more monetary need to sell/an intent based more on capitalism or the market system), which can lead to kids like me playing these games and getting into the folklore but in a vacuum like setting…I didn’t learn more about this and it’s real-ness until the internet where I had the freedom to research it for myself.

Also you can find another version/annotation here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Kingdoms