Grogh – Armenian Pagan Spirit and Curse Word

Nationality: Armenian/Armerican
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian

Informant’s Background:

My informant, AD, is an undergraduate student at USC who grew up in Glendale, California. Her family immigrated to the United States from the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Context:

The informant is my girlfriend and we share an apartment together. I asked her if she could share some Armenian folklore with me, and this is one of the pieces that she provided.

Performance:

AD: “There’s this thing in Armenian that it’s like a pretty common curse that people will say, like my mom says it a lot when she gets angry and stuff, uhm, or like… uhm like y’know something bad happens or whatever. It’s “grogh”, right? And there’s different ways to say it, there’s like “groghi tsotsu” or “groghu kez tani”. Uhm, so “grogh” means “writer”, so when you say that word you are refferring to an old pagan Armenian spirit, the Grogh, who was like a scribe that I think traditionally uh, had the names of people who would ever be born and who were going to die, like their lifespans in a book, so he was a symbol of death right? And he would take people when they died. He was basically an Armenian pagan form of the grim reaper. Uhm, so when people say “grogh” or “groghu kez tani”, that means “let the scribe take you” or “groghi tsotsu” that means “in the arms of the scribe”. So yeah.”

Informant’s Thoughts:

AD: “It’s strange. Like I guess, I dunno, it’s like a common word, it’s like the equivalent of being like “damn”, but it’s like so specific, and like it’s not like “grogh” is also not used in vernacular, it also just means “writer”, like it’s a common word, so it’s strange that it also is a curse.”

Thoughts:

I think that this word “grogh” is very similar to the English “damn” in many ways. It’s used in pretty much the same contexts, with the use of the word singularly being often an expression of frustration, or with more words being added to transform it into an insult such as “groghu kez tani” meaning “let the scribe take you” being very similar to the English “damn you to hell”. I think that the etymology of the word itself, originating as the name of a spirit or deity in Armenian paganism and over time becoming a word that simply means “writer” makes sense when compared with other examples of words with similar etymological origins, such as “atlas”, which now just refers to a map but once referred to the titan that held up the sky. 

“Bhaghnikt Anush Lini” – Armenian Saying

Nationality: American/Armenian
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 05/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Armenian

Informant’s Background:

My informant, AD, is an undergraduate student at USC who grew up in Glendale, California. Her family immigrated to the United States from the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Context:

The informant is my girlfriend and we share an apartment together. I asked her if she could share some Armenian folklore with me, and this is one of the pieces that she provided.

Translation:

  • Original Script: Բաղնիքտ անուշ լինի:
  • Transliteration: “Bhaghnikt Anush Lini”
  • Translation: “Have a fresh shower” or “Have a sweet shower”

Performance:

AD: “So there’s thing that’s like pretty common in like Armenian families that like my parents don’t really do that often but sometimes it happens. So there’s this thing in Armenian culture where after a shower you-or before a shower they will say like “Bhaghnikt Anush Lini” which means like… Uhm, it’s like a blessing for the shower, like they’re blessing the water from, like, the bathroom so that you have a nice fresh shower.”

M: “Where do you think it originated from?”

AD: “Uhm, probably like pagan beliefs that have just like carried over, over the years in like y’know the sanctity of water and stuff in Armenian culture, and in most cultures. It’s probably just a carry-over from those years.”

Informant’s Thoughts:

AD: ” It’s, uhm, a very common saying, and I don’t think I’ve heard any other saying that’s quite like it, so that’s interesting. It’s a way of giving thanks, and like, asking for good fortune, right? I think that’s very nice.”

Thoughts:

I don’t really feel I have much to say about this one. It seems to fit in well with some of the other traditions I’ve collected from this informant, as it seems that based on my collection many Armenian traditions are based around giving thanks for “small” things, such as bread in a previous article of mine, so this fits very nicely in with that category of traditions.

“Kes hiljaks jääb, see ilma jääb.” – Estonian Proverb

Nationality: Estonian/Canadian
Age: 68
Occupation: University Professor
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Estonian

Informant’s Background:

The informant, in this case, is my mother, M, who was a first generation immigrant born to an Estonian family in the North-East of Canada. Her family had escaped from occupied Estonia, and had settled in Canada before she was born. She moved with my father to Los Angeles, in the United States, to take a job as a university professor. My brother and I were born a few years after.

Context:

I mentioned collecting folklore to my mother, who I regularly call on the phone now that I have moved out of our house, and she told me that she wanted to help. I told her yes, and she emailed me the following.

Translation:

  • Original: “Kes hiljaks jääb, see ilma jääb.”
  • Translation: He who is late, will go without.

Informant’s Context:

M: “My mother used to say it all the time when we were kids and taking our time about coming back inside when she rang the dinner bell to summon us to dinner. She sometimes added an extra line of her own – “ja raua rohtu saab” – which meant “and will get cod liver oil” (a vile-tasting medicine that used to be given to children as a vitamin D supplement).”

Informant’s Thoughts: 

M: “This is harsh, but reasonable in some circumstances. Even though she often said it, I can’t remember my mother ever actually enforcing it. She understood that we were busy playing and that we had often wandered quite far away from home, so it took time to get back.”

Thoughts:

This seems like a pretty standard proverb to me. It gets across a lesson, in this case in the form of a warning, about being punctual, most likely aimed at children, as seen by it’s use in my mother’s example. It also contains a threat, that if one is not punctual one will be denied something, in this case food. Denial of food was a fairly common means of punishment for children throughout history, and even in some stricter households to this day, so this makes sense as well. In this case it seems more like a light warning intended to get the message across without really intending to enforce the punishment.

Euchre – Midwestern Card Game

Nationality: American (Arizona)
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 04/9/2021
Primary Language: English

Informant’s Background:

My informant, JA, is a undergraduate student at the University of Southern California. He moved from his family home in Arizona to attend college in Los Angeles. His family is of German ancestry.

Context:

I (AT) am a close friend of JA, and he comes over to hang out at my apartment often. I asked him if he had any folklore he could share and telling me about this game that I had never heard of was his response.

Performance:

JA: “So anyways Euchre is a card game that I think is relatively popular throughout the Midwest, but it’s a card game that is typically is played with four players, but it can be scaled up and down, where players take tricks based on suits and everyone is divided into two teams and every hand in the basic four-player variant you play with your partner across from you, and a trump suit is decided by dealing out 5 cards to each player. It’s only the cards nine, ten, jack, queen, king, and ace are the only cards in each suit in the game, uh, five cards are dealt to each player and four are set aside, and the top is turned over which determines the trump suit. Then its played like a typical trick taking game where high cards take tricks, unless the trump suit is played in which case those cards take the trick, but in Euchre, uhm, the highest card of the trump suits are the jacks instead of the aces, so if heart is trump then jack of hearts is the highest, while the other colors spade and clubs in that hand would have the normal order. And you play enough rounds until one team gets ten points. I dunno, it’s just a very easy game to teach people, you can get into it very quickly, and I play it a lot with my parents and my grandparents, especially when they’re around, because it’s just… the primary activity that we do together, it’s kind of a tradition we do it a lot after meals, family meals, with big gatherings like that. It’s… I dunno I guess the primary tradition we have on that side of the family – it’s very casual, it’s a good time.”

AT: “Who taught you the game?”

JA: “I think my mom had to have taught me the game first, uhm, but she might have taught it in conjunction with my grandparents, I’m not sure.”

AT: “But they all already knew it? Do you know where they learned it from?”

JA: “I mean my mom learned it from my grandparents, beyond that, I don’t know.”

Thoughts:

I don’t have much to add to this one, other than that I think it’s interesting that a specific card game can become such a tradition in someone’s family, with the rules being passed on through generations. I had also never heard of the game itself, so I thought it was worth documenting here. 

Finish Every Grain of Rice – Folk Belief

Nationality: Asian American
Age: 60
Occupation: Biomedical Research
Residence: San Jose, California
Performance Date: 04/03/2021
Primary Language: English
Language: Mandarin

Context:

I come home for dinner with my extended family over the weekend. My thirteen-year-old cousin announces that she is finished and is about to leave, but my uncle chastises her for not finishing every grain of rice in her rice bowl. He looks to my mother in support, and she explains the reasoning behind the belief. 

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Performance:

[Mother to cousin]: “This is something that my grandmother told me and your father when we were young. Every grain of rice is the result of hard work from the rice farmers, and not finishing all your rice is disrespecting them. If you do not finish grains of rice, it reflects on your character and shows that you do not value the hard work of those in society. Because of this, a freckle will grow on your face for every grain of rice that you do not finish. My grandmother told me that this happened to her when she was young. Her mother told her to finish all the rice in the bowl, but she stubbornly refused. Over the next two years, she grew three freckles that she did not have before this.”

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Meaning to informant: This belief is very important to my mother and uncle because my grandmother was the primary caretaker of both of them. Their parents were both doctors who worked long hours and were not home often. My mother and uncle respected my grandmother a lot and took her words very seriously. While they do not know whether or not to believe the story about my grandmother’s freckles, following the belief is a form of honoring and remembering my great-grandmother. It is also a habit that they have formed and kept since their childhood. 

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Analysis: The belief shows that rice is very important to Chinese culture and that every grain is considered to be valuable. Historically, this was because many families in China were not very rich, and parents would tell their children this to enforce good habits about not wasting food. This is different from other foods like fish because fish represents wealth and if you were able to eat fish regularly historically in China, it would mean that your family was pretty well off. There is also a belief in China that leaving fish for the next year was a symbol of good fortune and wealth, which is why people leave leftover fish to be finished the next day on Chinese New Year.