The Bride Price

Nationality: Nigerian
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2016
Primary Language: English

Description: “Basically the bride price is just like, it’s part of marriage culture and tradition in Nigeria where the person who’s proposing would pay the woman’s family just with money. That way they’d have the right to marry that woman. In some places it’s very very expensive. Some places it’s cheap. Some places don’t even have it at all. I remember when my dad was marrying my mom was getting married to my dad he had to pay a bride price but it was a minimal minimal price just cause like her family is like the Bride Price shouldn’t be put in place to just like restrict you from marrying our daughter. People still do the bride price though. It’s very prevalent. That’s just one thing.”

2. My friend experienced this from the retelling of how his parents became engaged.

3. I walked into his dorm and he was just about to go to sleep. His roommate had fallen asleep and I asked him if I could grab some quick folklore from him before he crashed. He said sure.

4. This perspective is interesting because it’s from the outside looking in. My friend is even closer than a second hand account because he experiences the people who practiced this tradition on a daily basis. He views the way they act and talk and think, and all these things change his perspective on the cultural practice. He spoke frequently how it was stupid and it’s progressive and good to get away from it. However, it’s very possible that if his father had paid a huge price for his mother he may have considered it to be some sort of honor.

Kenyan Christmas

Nationality: Kenyan
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25, 2016
Primary Language: English

Description: “We celebrate Christmas with a Christmas tree. It depends where Christmas is for us, but we usually just go to grandparents house. As a family we all celebrate Christmas in the family home. And then go to church. It’s just a service. We talk about Christmas. They give the Christmas story. We don’t do a candlelight service though.”

2. My friend has heard of these things because he has experienced them first hand.

3. I walked into his dorm room and asked him if he could tell me the way that Kenyans celebrate Christmas.

4. I realized afterward that this may have been a bit of a stupid question. Christmas isn’t exactly a Kenyan holiday. The main reason that they probably celebrate it is because they’re trying to conform to the growing global western culture. However, it still speaks a lot about where they are at in their lives as a culture. The fact that they are moving toward the globalized western perspective is definitely notable. In fact, it’s even worth saying that they’re moving away from their traditional and historic culture as well. These are ideas and beliefs that have been grounded within thousands upon thousands of years of thought and are now beginning to drain away.

 

Asian Zombies

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: He lives in LA for school but is from Shanghai.
Performance Date: April 25, 2016
Primary Language: English

Description: “There are a lot of Zombie stories in China, especially the middle part of China. There’s a lot of mysterious people who are so skilled at controlling zombies to do something very bad. These people are suppressed by Chinese people in mid 20th century because the communist party would suppress them and their stories. Stories still circulate today. We call the people who control the zombies goyang-si. In Chinese it means the people who chase the zombies to control the zombies. They control zombies so they could use them to force people to give them money and if people give them money they would not use the zombies to damage their homes or damage their families. There’s specific details in ancient Chinese books. These are real jobs 200 years ago but it’s prohibited by governments in different eras because they’re mystical. Also, people who take those jobs are against the government.” This element of Chinese culture is not necessarily one seen only in China. Even more so, it’s not necessarily only seen in the eastern parts of the world. For example, there are very similar characteristics associated with voodoo practices in the caribbean. As far as I know from my subject, there aren’t exactly “good voodoo” practitioners in china with zombies like there are in the caribbean. It’s also worth noting that he made an effort to outline the fact that he couldn’t remember all the details that he’s read in the ancient Chinese books. That means not only were these stories spread by word of mouth, but apparently there were some fairly well developed written accounts of these stories. That could possibly mean that these books contain not only written accounts of these individuals known as the “Goeng-Si” but it’s also possible that they include instructions on how to actually perform the deed of raising the dead as well.”

 

2. Andrew grew up hearing stories about these zombies. They came in through books and childhood stories.

3. I walked into his dorm and asked him to tell me some Chinese folklore. This was one of the stories that he told me.

 

4. I think these stories also offer interesting similarities to voodoo stories from Haiti. They both contain some sort of mind control. However, the Asian zombies don’t tend to have a priest of a good morale. All their leaders are bad. In fact, one thing that strikes me as interesting is how the suppression of these people has influenced their work as a whole. It’d be interesting to write a paper comparing the two practices.

Very Good Rice Takes Time, Will

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, Texas
Performance Date: 3/24/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

To help pay the bills, the informant recently started working towards a bartending certification again. It was a relaxed, informal environment— people were waiting for a meeting to start— and they were sharing this exact piece of folklore with a friend

 

When you start to learn how to bartend, what do they tell you to help remember the mixes in the well?

 

“Um, so when you’re bartending, um… When you’re at the bar, there’s a well which is like the common liquors that you use in; it’s- to remember the kind of order and which liquors they are when you’re first learning you can learn the phrase “very good rice takes time, Paul- Will,” sorry. Some, some wells have different liquors but in California, it’s whiskey.

 

So “very” is vodka, “good” is gin, “rice” is rum, t or ta- “takes” is tequila, “time” is triple sec, and “Will” is whiskey. And so it’s just like an easy way to start getting used to using the well, um in a like timely… manner.”

 

Since mnemonics are there to fill a specific purpose and recall a specific set of information, I had not realized that they could also have multiplicity and variation. It seems that variations would be in response to a change in environment, as in this case, or a change in both time and landscapes, such as how the mnemonic to remember the planets of the solar system changed to reflect Pluto’s reclassification.

 

Also, it is possible that those who use mnemonics are largely beginners of the related topic. Using this mnemonic as an example, one might assume that its use might fall with a bartender as they become familiar with the well through greater bartending experience. Alternatively, the mnemonic could simply speed up a bartender’s familiarity with the well, with the bartender continually referring back to it.


Being a mnemonic unique to bartending, this is also a fun example of occupational folklore.

 

The Weaving Maid and the Cowherd

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 20
Occupation: student
Residence: LA
Performance Date: 4/4/16
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

“So there’s a beautiful, charming Weaving Maid who’s a servant in the palace of the Queen Mother, who is basically a really important female goddess. And this Weaving Maid just weaves all day.

“Then on Earth, there’s this, um, super hard-working Cowherd—that’s his name—who’s miserable and lonely because cows do not make inspiring companions. His parents died, he lives with his older brother and wife, and they treat him like a slave.

“No one really knows how the two of them [the Weaving Maid and the Cowherd] met, but the most common one is that one day the Weaving Maid and her six sisters came down to Earth to take a bath. And the Cowherd saw them. And being a creepy guy he picks up one of their clothes. And so when they see him, the six sisters turn into doves and flew away, but he took the Weaving Maid’s clothes. No one really knows how the negotiations went, but by the end she had fallen completely in love with him. So instead of turning into a bird and flying back, she stayed on Earth and married the Cowherd. And they had kids.

“When her master found out she was pissed. So she ordered the troops to abduct the Weaving Maid back up to Heaven. Um, the Cowherd tried to follow but he also had to carry the kids so he couldn’t catch up. He was a mortal so there’s no way for him to catch up to the god.

“But the Queen Mother, she doesn’t want to take any chances. So she takes a hairpin and forms a river—what we know as the Milky Way. And it flew between the Weaving Maid and the Cowherd, so then they’re separated forever. The kids that they had cried a lot to the Queen Mother to try to reunite the family, and the Weaving Maid’s six sisters also wanted them to reunite.

“So, after a lot of complaining the Queen Mother finally became a little bit merciful and called up a flock of birds to build a bridge over the river. She allowed the lovers to be reunited for one night every year, one the seventh night of the seventh lunar month. And on that day here, a flock of magical birds suddenly appear and form a bridge over the Milky Way, and they can meet up in the middle.

“Uh, so on the seventh day of every seventh lunar month, called the ‘Festival of the Seventh Evening,’ girls hold weaving competitions in honor of the maid and they sacrifice fruits that they put out overnight. It was a very good sign if you had spiders come out and spin webs over the fruit because it’s kind of like the weaving.”

 

My roommate, KY, performed this folk myth for me. He was born in China and lived there for the first few years of his life. The story of the Weaving Maid is a classic Chinese myth that is told all over the country. K told me there are many versions, but this is the one he remembers his parents reciting to him when he was young. He said that he always liked this story because it explains the Milky Way. He remembers that his dad would take him out at night to look at the stars and sometimes tell him about the Weaving Maid and similar stories. Apparently there are other Chinese myths that explain how different stars and constellations were formed.

K actually performed this piece for me when we were sitting out in our backyard one night. Being in LA, we couldn’t really look up and see the Milky Way. I don’t think the story had the same effect as it does when you can look up and see the “river” that the Queen Mother creates in the myth. But it still captured my imagination. My roommate and I are both physics students and avid lovers of astronomy. I asked him if he thought this story influenced his decision to study physics at all. He mused on this and replied that he had never thought of it, “but it must have something to do with my fascination of the stars and stuff.”

That is what I love about folk tales, and creation myths especially. Even though we know they are (probably) not true explanations for why things are, they allow us to think about beautiful, grandiose phenomenon, such as the Milky Way, in familiar, human ways. I believe myths were, in fact, early human’s first attempts at explaining the mysteries of the universe. Before we had hard science, we had our imaginations and our special ability to craft stories that could decipher this amazing world.

 

For another version of this myth, see Picturing Heaven in Early China by Lillian Lan-ying Tseng. This book features a lot of interesting Chinese creation myths about space and the stars.