El Raton Perez- A variation of the Tooth Fairy – Myth

Nationality: Argentinian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/13/19
Primary Language: English

Piece: “I remember el Raton Perez, basically it’s the Argentinian equivalent of the tooth fairy. It’s basically a fucking sewer rat, I’m just saying sewer rat out of spite, but that was the base of it, you put your tooth under your pillow and he takes it and leaves you money.”

Background information: The informant is a very comedic student with an Argentinian background. Although he resides in the US, he strongly identifies with his Argentinian roots.

Context: This is a myth that he heard as a kid. Instead of knowing the tooth fairy as the “tooth fairy”, he came to know it as el “Raton Perez”, which translates to “Perez the Rat”

Personal Analysis: I was first introduced to the “tooth fairy” by my parents. Being of Hispanic descent, the “tooth fairy” was first introduced to me as “El raton de los dientes” which translates to “The teeth Rat” more or less, the tooth fairy, even though it’s not an actual fairy. I’ve never heard the Argentinian version of the tooth fairy so I was especially intrigued to hear a common last name given to the rat. (Perez) The use of a last name is unique to the Argentinian adaptation because most Latin American countries classify the “tooth fairy” as just, and only that. No specific identity is used.

 

 

Don’t Stab Your Food with Chopsticks – A Chinese Folk Belief

Nationality: Chinese, Vietnamese
Age: 49
Residence: Ewa Beach, HI
Performance Date: April 14, 2019
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: Vietnamese, English

Item:

Q: You said how you can’t stab chopsticks into food?

H: 落去飯(lok6 heoi3 faan6), right?

[Translation: Into rice right?]

Q: Yeah, 飯 (faan6) or 嘢食 (je5 sik6) in general?

[Translation: Yeah, rice or food in general?]

H: 嘢食 (je5 sik6) or 飯 (faan6) or whatever.  Why?

[Translation: Food or rice or whatever.  Why?]

H: 你拜神你係唔係插咗兩枝香落去 (lei5 baai3 sen4 lei5 hai6 m5 hai6 caap3 zo2 loeng2 zi2 hoeng1 lok6 heoi3).  It look like 你拜神插嗰啲嘢(lei5 baai3 sen4 caap3 go2 di1 je5).

[Translation: When you pray, don’t you stick the two incense into the holder?  It looks like when you’re praying and you have the two incense in the incense holder.]

 

Context:

I collected this piece in a Cantonese-English conversation about Chinese and Vietnamese folk beliefs.  The informant can speak Cantonese fluently but chose to speak to me in both Cantonese and English for my understanding.  The informant is Chinese and was born and raised in a Chinese community in Vietnam before immigrating to the United States in her late teens.  She didn’t mention specifically where she learned not to stab chopsticks into your food from, but only said, similar to a number of other folk beliefs and customs she knew of, that you would just know or pick up this sort of thing growing up from the community around you.

 

Analysis:

The basis of many folk beliefs is the belief in magic, either sympathetic or contagious.  In the case of not stabbing your chopsticks into food, the idea that like produces like comes into play because as the informant says, the two chopsticks standing up looking like sticks of incense used when praying.  Praying occurs for a number of reasons, death in the family and respecting one’s ancestors included, and it can be highly ritualized in Chinese culture, particularly when praying to the ancestors due to the long-standing tradition of ancestor worship and respect for those who came before you in your lineage.  There are rules about where the incense and incense holder are placed, what kind of offerings should be made, and when to pray.  For example, praying for ancestors has set time frames but praying after an individual’s death is done as appropriate.  As such, standing chopsticks in food not only emulates incense in the physical image, it may be seen as a poor recreation of the ritual and consequently a disrespect to one’s ancestors.  With such emphasis placed on respecting one’s lineage, this is very majorly looked down upon.  Furthermore, considering how like produces like – especially if it is not the correct time to pay one’s respects to their ancestors – someone may bring death or other bad omens to themselves or those around them through emulation of praying at an otherwise inappropriate time.

French Joke Turned Folk Practice for Middle School French Class

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/19/19
Primary Language: English

French Folk Joke:

“My 7th grade French class all took french. It was all our first year of french and I went to middle school with a bunch of people I ended up going to high school with so we all took a bunch of classes together. We had learned this joke that became an inside joke. It was the first French joke we ever learned. We would tell it to each other and share the reactions of the people we told the joke to with the rest of the class. So the joke is, ‘Comment s’appelle un chien qui vends des médicaments? Un pharmachienne.’ So it means, ‘What do you call a dog who sells medicine?’ The word chien is dog, so the answer is,  you call it a mixture of pharmacy and dog. The word for pharmacist which I don’t know off the top of my head and then ‘chien’. ”

Context:

A middle school french class in Omaha, Nebraska.

Informant Background:
The informant is 21, from Nebraska originally. She now resides in Southern California.

My Analysis:

This play on words is a good way to get children to remember vocabulary. There are many words in french that sound almost identical to their english pronunciation. Hence, it is easy to remember those. However, the ones that don’t align with english pronunciation like ‘chien’ are so abstract that this little joke will help young students remember the vocabulary term. My informant said she does not remember any french, but she does remember this joke. So, clearly this was an effective learning mechanism.

 

Long Noodles, Long Life

Nationality: Filipino-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Notre Dame, Indiana
Performance Date: 4/16/19
Primary Language: English

Context/Background: The informant is a first-gen Filipino-American whose family has engaged in a wide range of customs throughout her life. One specifically pertains to food and one’s lifespan which she learned from her family.

“Yeah, so a Filipino… maybe Asian… tradition is to eat long noodles on your birthday for long life. So Even if you go out to dinner for your birthday, you HAVE to eat long noodles in order to have a long and fulfilling life.” (Informant)

 Analysis/Interpretation: When I first heard of this tradition I thought it seemed like a nice practice where one could find a clear state of mind when consuming their bowl representing a long life on a birthday. I looked into this more after speaking directly to the informant and found a large presence of this tradition in Chinese culture where participants eat yi mein, known as “longevity noodles.” I found it interesting that these noodles were being compared to cakes in some aspects because these noodles are such an integral aspect of birthdays in Chinese culture. Seeing how these specific aspects of birthdays in varying cultures are so integrated, caused me to wonder how other cultures perceive American birthday traditions such as cake and blowing out candles.

 

For further information on other forms of food for with significance, refer to

China Highlights. (1998-2019). The Symbolism of Chinese Foods. Retrieved from https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/chinese-food/chinese-food-symbolism.htm

 

Egg for Protection (against El Ojo)

Nationality: Mexican-Salvadorian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/1/19
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Context/Background: The informant is Salvadoran and Mexican-American and had grown up surrounded with the use of eggs to absorb bad energy. It had common connections to “el ojo,” something that is given to someone through magic, typically young, with the intent of inflicting harm.

[Face-to-face conversation]

“There’s something that any Hispanic person that you talk to will tell you this. Um, if something bad happens, you take an egg and you like… put the egg over your body. I don’t know if you’ve seen the video- they do it to a dog. But, you put it all over your body, and that egg is supposed to take out all the badness in you. So supposedly when people cast… um like spells on you… like, these wizards- these people that do bad things- and when… but one of the big things that happens to you is El Ojo. So El Ojo happens when like… let’s say I have a child, right? And a woman… or like anyone can come up to me and be like… ‘Hey can I hold your kid, right?’ And then if I say no, I run the risk of them giving my child El Ojo, and if my child is given El Ojo, he will die. Like, they will die. It happens. And the only way to cure that is to do like… the egg thing, or to give the person the child. And any Latinx new mother will be told like… ‘Be careful. Your kid can get El Ojo.’ That’s really common- not just Mexico; El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras. Very common.”

Introduction: The informant was introduced to this through her mother.

Analysis: I’ve vaguely heard of using an egg to collect bad energy; however, I’ve recently become more familiar with “the evil eye,” something coinciding with “el ojo” in different Latino cultures. To my understanding, the evil eye refers to what can be given to someone, typically without their knowledge. Oftentimes, many people wear something (typically a necklace or perhaps a piece of clothing) which is to ward off anyone giving them this eye. El ojo, as described to me, means “the eye” in Spanish and is given to people, typically young babies. I find this interesting because in the context of what I’ve been exposed to it, it’s been more socialized with adults rather than newborns.

El Ojo is essentially similar to the Evil Eye, except it is performed by wizards and Santeria practitioners in Latin American regions.

 

For more information on another rendition of el ojo, “the evil eye,” refer to

Heaphy, L. (2017, May 2). The Evil Eye Powerful Protective Talisman. Retrieved from https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/ritual-objects/the-evil-eye-and-the-hamsa