Category Archives: Rituals, festivals, holidays

Japanese Bean Tradition

Nationality: American
Age: 57
Occupation: High School Teacher
Residence: San Francisco/Bay Area
Primary Language: English

Type: Folk Tradition/Superstition

  1. “When we lived in Japan, we learned about this tradition. On the last day before spring, you get a can of beans and throw them out the window, or just anywhere outside. Everyone did it and we were VERY confused at first, but after we asked around, by the second year we were living there we picked up on it. The idea is that you are throwing out the bad spirits. This tradition goes back hundreds of years. If you throw beans out your window at home for instance, that would signify removing the bad spirits you’re your home specifically.”
  2. I obtained this piece of folklore from my mother, who spend two years living in Japan as a child. Her father, my grandfather, was a psychiatrist in the air force and they were stationed in Japan, in the city of Tachi Kawa. They lived on an army base but they made many Japanese friends that living in the area. My mother obtained this folklore by first observing it and then eventually, her parents asked around. She remembers being incredibly confused about it as a child—seeing beans all over the street outside the base.
  3. No one in my family knows or remembers why beans, or the context behind the tradition. All they knew was that many Japanese people did that, and so many people believed that it worked. My grandparents have been back many times since the 1960’s when they left, but they have never been back in the spring and so they essentially forgot about it.
  4. I love this tradition. I think it has a lot of character and it is unique. I have never really heard of anything else like it. I am also drawn to the idea of purifying places from bad spirits which are believed to bring back luck and bad health. It might be a placebo effect but it would still make me feel better about my life and those around me.

How to Name Scottish Royalty

Nationality: Scottish-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Milton, MA
Performance Date: 3/25/17
Primary Language: English

Context: Gathered from one of my roommates once he found out about my collection project.

Background: My roommate comes from “a long lineage of Scottish kings and clan leaders of a certain group of isles.”

The Tradition: In Scotland, the ritual for naming a child in a family line, particularly if they’re royalty, is to simply add the prefix “Mc” or “Mac” to the name of the father and make that the child’s surname.

Example: My roommate has an ancestor with the full title Angus McRonald McDonald Sworely, King of the Isles. Thus, he is alternatively know as King Angus, Son of Ronald McDonald Sworely, who was himself at one point King Ronald, Son of Donald Sworely.

(Note: The proper spelling of the surname “Sworely” is unknown.)

Analysis: I found this Scottish process of naming is most comparable to the Vikings’ method of creating the “____son” surname (Ex: Lief Erikson, or Lief, Son of Erik). I put a little research into the claims my roommate made, and the only thing I found off about the whole thing was that the names mentioned above are in fact “MacDonald” rather than “McDonald” (I kept the piece above as is for the sake of putting down what I was told by my roommate).

The Unitarian Universalist Church

Nationality: Scottish-American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Milton, MA
Performance Date: 3/25/17
Primary Language: English

Context: Gathered from one of my roommates once he found out about my collection project.

Background: My roommate has never had a set religious background, and was always in something of a melting pot of faiths when he went to churches like the one described here.

Dialogue: So, I don’t know exactly how Unitarianism, like, started, but… At some point it was just this sort of culmination of, like, various Christian sects, like Episcopalian or Protestant or whatever was around Massachusetts going on. Just a bunch of them sort of, like, coalesced into one group that’s like… “You know what, Trinity or Unity, doesn’t matter! We all have spirit!”

Analysis: The intereseting thing about this piece of folklore to me is how much is blended together in a church like this. It’s not only a mixing of various religious sects, either: at one point, my roommate sang a song he was taught as a kid, about the “Seven Guiding Principles of Kindness.” He remembers only these lines:

One, each person is important
Two, be kind in all you do

The song, interestingly enough, is set to the tune of “Do-Re-Mi” fromthe mucial The Sound of Music. So we have a mashup of popular culture, religion, and folk belief, all in this single church.

The Mendyke Open

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Portland, OR
Performance Date: 3/13/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese (Mandarin)

Context: I collected this from a friend on a trip over Spring Break, after he’d heard me talking about folklore with another friend I was collecting from.

Background: This is an annual gathering that my friend’s family holds. Below is a story illustrating the type of events that happens at these gatherings.

Dialogue: My great-grandfather, before he died… Uh, eventually he was one of the oldest people at these gatherings, and… and um, as I mentioned there were these golf courses and so, they’d basically all get together and play golf, um… So, at one point, my great grandfather decided to— that he’d go play a round. Now, at this point he was, like, in his 90s, he was pretty much blind, pretty much deaf, um… So he gets up to the golf course, he takes the golf, uh, the, the golf club, and he starts aiming the golf ball, but… it seems to be in the complete opposite direction, or like a completely different direction than where the hole is, and so everyone is just, they start yelling, “No, not that way, the other way! That way!” And he just shoos them off, and, uh, everyone’s like, “Okay, I guess he’s crazy, just let him be.” So, he swings, er, he holds it up, he swings, and hits… and a hole in one!

Analysis: The story above isn’t something that my friend himself witness, but something he’d been told by other family members. Because of this, the story feels more like an example of the family’s camaraderie, and how them coming together brings about exciting events. It’s more about the experience of being together as a family than any actually miraculous golf swing that could happen.

Three Finger Joe

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 5, 2017
Primary Language: English

Subject: Retelling of a Camp Legend

 

Informant: Lauren Herring

 

Background Information/Context: Camp Mystic is an all-girls camp in Hunt, Texas. It was founded in 1926 by a coach at the University of Texas, and it is still an incredibly popular camp today. In fact, the camp is so popular that in order to enroll, your parents have to call the head of the camp and ask to put you down on the wait list no longer than a few weeks after you are born. Ideally, a spot would clear up for you by the time you are the age they accept campers, but this is not always the case. Lauren Herring, from Houston, Texas, was lucky enough to get off the wait list, and has been attending Camp Mystic since for twelve years–the past two years as a camp counselor. So Camp Mystic has been a huge part of her childhood, as she has spent each of these past twelve years attending the camp for one month during the summer. I asked her if she ever had any ghost stories or heard any legends from Camp Mystic, and this was her response:

 

“I don’t know who started this story, but it’s kind of always been a big thing at Mystic. So there’s this little shed near Chatter Box, which is one of the cabins. You live in Chatter Box your third year. And there’s this random little shed with a lock on it right next to Chatter Box, and no one knew what it was for, not even the counselors. It was kind of just there. And it was scary looking, like really old and falling down and stuff.

 

So there was a story that there was a man that lived in it, and at night he would come into Chatter Box and scratch your back, but he only had three fingers. You knew he had come into your cabin that night if someone woke up with three scratches on their back.

 

His name was Three Finger Joe. We were all really scared and paranoid, because we were like nine and really completely believed it. And I think some of us would lie for attention or to mess with the rest of us or whatever because people would wake up and be like, ‘Oh my God, I have three fingered scratches on my back!’”

 

I loved hearing this story from Lauren because it reminded me of when I was younger and would listen to similar stories at the camps that I would go to. Growing up, I loved hearing ghost stories, and this one really took me back. I could tell when Lauren was recounting the memory to me that she enjoyed this kind of reminiscing as well.