Tag Archives: animal folklore

Headless Mule Legend

Text: Below is the performance describing the Brazilian Headless Mule legend.

Interviewer: Do you have any stories of legendary figures?

Interviewee: Yeah, so in Brazil we have, uh, I used to be really, like deathly scared of this one mythological creature, in Portuguese the name is Mula sem Cabeca. In English, it, uh, the Headless Mule, and it’s basically a mule, headless mule, but in the place of its head, it’s, uh, it’s like a bunch of flames. So, uh, when I used to, when someone read to me that story and showed me, like, a picture, I was like always scared of, like, going to my Grandmother’s farm, where there were like horses and stuff, so I was just, like, very scared of horses, but, uh, it’s like a cool little Folklore. I don’t know the story behind it, but I think there is, like, an origin story.

Context:

The interviewee is a 22 year-old college student who grew up in São Paulo, Brazil. At first he could not recall any legends from his childhood, and then he remembered the figure above. He learned about the legend from a family member reading him a story about the figure from a children’s book.

Analysis:

This mythical creature exemplifies how folklore interacts with published media. The widespread Brazilian folkloric legend of the Headless Mule was incorporated by a children’s book publisher as a folklorism, which helped further disseminate the story. The interviewee’s own life experience affected how he interacted with the legend, as growing up around a farm made him worry that this legendary animal might attack him around his grandmother’s farm animals. The legend of the Headless Mule is a clear example of the frightening effect of the uncanny. The familiar sight of farm animals was made scary by its alteration. This folkloric belief is similar to that of the evil headless horseman, but this time, it is the evil farm animal that is headless, not its rider, showcasing how across cultures, headless entities are folk figures of horror.

Virginia Mice Graves

Context:

The informant recalls a childhood tradition in which she and her peers referred to small and neatly arranged stones as “mouse graves.” The group would sometimes pause for moments of silence believing them to be tombstones. The informant is now a student in university and recalls this from her childhood in Virginia.

Text:

“I remember when I was um growing up, back in Virginia, kind of in like a suburban area and we would have like, the car riders, walkers, and like bus riders. Which basically, we’re all grouped based off of like how we got home.



I was sometimes a car rider, sometimes a walker. But when we would walk to home from school, there was like a tunnel system. So we would go down the tunnel to get to the other side of the street without crossing the street. 
It was like a safer way for kids to get to the neighborhoods. And for some reason, when we were younger, we used to, joke like down by the tunnel entrance. I think it was like a storm drain or something like that. It was like this like big, kind of like circle looking, like sewer thing. That was shorter than us, but still, reachable, if that makes sense. 
There were these stones outside of the drain. And, when they were like tiny and they were positioned in the very light organized way. 
I think it was like keep debris from, like crawling down. And I, like me and like the group of friends, would like call them like mouse graves, because, like, they were tiny, like, tombstones.

And so like, we would sometimes have like moments of silence for, like, the mice. And, these mice, so sad that they left this way, but so happy that they get to be together, like, we took it very seriously. 

So that was our, like, I guess, our explanation for tiny things. 
Like everything was, like, it was small. in a spooky area had to be a grave of some sort of animal. It’s not.
”

Analysis:

This example is a form of children’s folklore and a type of legend belief for this folk group. The physical environment, the storm drain and arranged stones, incites the narrative creation, demonstrating how folklore often emerges from interpreting ambiguous or unexplained features in the world around us, especially when were are younger and everything is new to us.

It also reinforces group cohesion as the shared interpretation and ritualized behavior, like the moment of silence, creates a sense of belonging among the children. While the informant now acknowledges it isn’t the truth she states that in the moment is was very real to her. This level of seriousness comes from the frame set around the event and allows children to interact with death in a way that feels safe. It lives in a slightly eerie atmosphere that encourages imagination and allows the ritual of death and funerals to be a part of their life at a young age.

It also shows how anyone, even children, are active bearers of tradition as they perform the ritual for the dead mice. The practice transforms the ordinary stones or manmade features into a cultural place showing how folklore is tied to social integration and imagination. This legend belief and safe place to play gives kids meaning to their surroundings and strengthens their connection to their home and peers and their walk back from school.


Marrying in Sunshowers

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 2/18/2023
Primary Language: English

Text:

“When it’s sunny but there’s rain outside, that means the lion is getting married.”

Context:

PK is a 19-year old USC freshman who lived in Upstate New York. During a car ride to his local grocery store, he remembers the presence of rain and sunshine outside the window. Although he didn’t really understand what his mother meant, he embraced the saying and held it with him throughout his childhood. He predisposes that it means “something about finding happiness and joy alongside certain milestones in life.”

Analysis:

Especially when there are language barriers that detach one from their culture, certain sayings and proverbs appear to hold an even more abstract, metaphorical ambience that adds a more sacred, fantastical aura to the proverb. After searching for the influence of sun and rain in folklore, I’ve discovered that there seems to be a beautiful intermingling between joy and sadness, which reveals the ambivalence and complexities of life itself. Rather than attempting to rationalize the bizarre, folklore embraces it and makes it understandable. In fact, in various cultures, “sunshowers” are often linked to animals, particularly clever trickster animals, getting married or giving birth. This may be connected to the rain being a contradiction to the natural order. This attachment to nature–through rain, sunlight, and animals–is prevalent in many variants of folklore, and there is always a strive towards harmony among these dynamic elements. Perhaps as a way to explain seemingly magical phenomena, people seek their culture’s significant animals to create a more tangible reasoning. Especially to justify incongruities and inconsistencies in nature, folklore enables us to provide an explanation in order to restore a sense of ease and balance with our world.

Aloe and Bad Energy

Background: The informant is a 26 year old female who lives in a suburb of Chicago. She was born and raised around the city with her grandparents, mother, and younger brother. Her grandparents, immigrants from Mexico, imparted most of their knowledge to the informant.

Context: The context was, when speaking to the informant over the phone, she mentioned how one plant liquefied, and was asked questions surrounding the meaning of it.

Text:


VA: I was always taught, growing up by my grandparents and mom, that plants soak up the bad energy in a home.

Me: Any particular plants, or is it just any one?

VA: Aloe. If someone with bad intentions or, uh, jealousy comes into your home, the aloe takes the hit for you. So, that’s why sometimes they’ll spontaneously liquify themselves. 

Me: Liquefy?

VA: It’s like, basically the plant completely deflates and is dead. Like, the plant will be perfectly fine, people show up with bad energy, and when they’re gone, the plant is dead.

Me: Is it always aloe?

VA: Sometimes animals take the hit, too. That’s what my mom said happened to my budgies [birds].

Analysis:

Informant: It’s something she deeply believes in, being told many times throughout her life that it was something that would happen upon bad energy. She didn’t seem to question anything about it.

Mine: Plants have long had an association with the supernatural, typically to treat illnesses. In a sense, having bad energy may be considered a supernatural illness and something to be treated, as it is still making the body worsen. Aloe may be the main plant that soaks up bad energy because aloe is commonly used to soften the skin, which draws up the image of breaking through a barrier. It’s like the aloe plant softens the skin, allowing the bad energy to slowly seep out, but in the process, it sucks away all the energy from the plant itself. It’s just like trading one life force for another, with the plant giving life for a human being. The concept of animals also deflating seems a unique touch to their familie’s folklore, or may be something the mother told the child as an excuse for what truly happened to the budgies, creating a scenario where superstition becomes the modern excuse.

The Banshee and the scream of the fox.

E is a 35-year-old Irish female originally from Cork, Ireland. E currently runs a bed and breakfast with her husband outside out Cork, Ireland.

E performed this folklore over breakfast in the dining room of her bed and breakfast. I asked E if she had any Irish folklore she would be willing to share with me.

E: I remember stories of the Banshee years ago. You know, it was one thing I reckon I was scared of as a kid because if you hear these really loud screams, my mother would say it was the Banshee, like it could be the Banshee, and if you hear the Banshee someone who belonged to you is going to die. Scary stuff, um, it was just an old Irish thing years ago and if you saw the Banshee which is a big white lady, kinda like a ghost, and if you saw that, yeah, they taught that you were going to die, so basically if you saw it that’s the end of you kind of thing. Um, but, I remember as kids, do you know-do you know the way foxes have really loud kind of a bark that a fox would? You can confuse with the Banshee. People who think that “oh my God I heard a noise up the hill!” but it would be a fox because there’s lots of foxes around here, and.. it’s a really high pitched scream. Like it would, it would sound like someone’s nearly being murdered like, its just that type of a scream. But if you didn’t know it was a fox, you might think it was the Banshee.

Reflection: Out of all my efforts to collect folklore in Ireland, the story of the Banshee was the story I heard 90% of my time. As E was the last person I had a chance to interview during my brief visit to Ireland, I was initially disappointed that the story of the Banshee was one of the only bits of folklore she could think of. However, after looking back on her performance of the legend with a clear mind, I realized her telling gave valuable local insight into her community. Based on the E’s association of foxes’ eerily people-like scream to the screams of the Banshee, the legend is imbued with greater credibility through linkage to the real world, that wouldn’t otherwise exist in places where foxes aren’t common. Even though the Banshee legend is generally well-known, the individual variation that E lent to her performance of the legend ensures that including the folklore in my collection is not worth considering a failure.