Tag Archives: animals

The Snake’s Curse

Nationality: Panamanian
Age: 45
Occupation: Medievalist, Professor
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 18, 2016
Primary Language: English

The informant, LF, is a medievalist from Panama. She comes from an agricultural family that largely lived in the countryside. LF recounts a family story involving a curse transmitted by a snakebite:

 

“So in my family- in the part of my family that lived in the countryside- my relatives earned their livelihood through the raising of animals and crops. Everyone participated. Even in our home closer to the city we had a chicken coop and a little bit of corns and tomatoes. We have a deeply-rooted agricultural tradition in our family.

So my great-great aunt had her own farm in the country. She was working on the farm and there was this snake. She didn’t see the snake and it bit her on the hand, and she had to be taken to the doctor- she was very close to dying but miraculously she recovered. When she went back to her farm, it was after the harvest and it was time to plant again. But when she planted the seeds, the plants never came up. So she went to tend to the trees that had been growing on the farm for generations, but according to the family story, the trees withered and died after she tried to prune them.

No one in the family knew how to explain it. The only thing they could come up with was that after the snakebite, she couldn’t touch plants because she had been damned. It was like something from the garden of Eden- if you get bitten by a snake, you cannot have a beautiful garden. You cannot touch a plant, because you will kill it. Upon contact, you kill the plants because you have been cursed by the snake’s poison.”

Was this a common belief, or was it exclusively told within your family?

“No, I think it was something my family came up with because they couldn’t explain what had happened to their relative. It was like a family superstition.”

Who did you learn this story from?

“I think I learned it from my mother. It supposedly happened to her great aunt. I never met this person and I don’t even know if it’s true. I heard it when I was a little kid. It came up actually when we were all watching a documentary about snakes, my mom suddenly goes- “Do you know what happened to your  great aunt?”- It was just a casual thing.

It means that people come up with explanations for things that are unexplainable. It could have been that it didn’t rain that year, or that it rained too much, and the plants died naturally. But it was such a drastic change- this farm had been in the family for generations and it had always been successful until that year.”

 

My thoughts: I agree with the informant when she says that folk beliefs often arise when people want to explain strange events. It’s a way of rationalizing things we can’t explain otherwise, like a sudden lack of crops. I think it’s interesting that the informant makes a connection with Christian religion when she mentions the Garden of Eden- perhaps folk beliefs sometimes subconsciously reflect aspects of organized religion.

Animal Nicknaming and Jokes

Nationality: Chilean
Age: 60
Occupation: Agronomist/Coffee Plantation Manager
Residence: Hawaii
Performance Date: 03/29/15
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

I collected this piece of folklore from my dad while he was visiting. We ended up just sitting in the car in a parking lot while he shared some more Chilean folklore with me.

In Chile, people often give each other animal names as nicknames. The animal is supposed to somehow resemble or represent the person, so that they can be identifiable by that name. For example, the tallest kid in the class may be called the giraffe, and the annoying one could be call the mosquito. My dad’s nickname back in grade school was “el mono” or “the monkey,” because he was always seen climbing a tree of some sort.

Jokes can also be made using these animal nicknames and creating a pun with the sound that the animal makes.

Ex) -¿Por qué se llamas el gato? (Why do they call you the cat?)

–Mee-oowbuela me dice [Mi abuela me dice.] (My grandma calls me that.)

Many years ago in Chile, people used to live in the country side more than in the city, so there are many jokes about roosters, and chickens, and ducks, etc.

To foreigners or outsiders, this type of joking might not always make sense, especially if the definition of joking might be completely different. What was particularly difficult for me to get, was the pun-making using animal sounds. Not only do the puns have to match words in spanish, but the onomatopoeia sounds that animals make vary from country to country.

The Turtle and the Shark

Nationality: Samoan American
Age: 19
Occupation: USC student athlete
Residence: USC
Performance Date: April 23, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Samoan

The informant’s family originated in Samoa, his parents were born and raised there before traveling and moving into the United States. He takes many visits to Samoa and is very in touch with his Samoan heritage and culture. He shared some common folklore with me that he could think of off of the top of his head. 

Informant…

“During a time of a huge famine and starvation spread across Samoa a blind grandma and granddaughter were put out of there family because they were seen as kind of a burden. They decided to jump into the ocean to cast their fates upon sea because it was giving and caring. Magic turned them into a turtle and a shark. The grandma and granddaughter wanted to find a new home. They traveled for a long time and were constantly turned away from potential homes until they found the shores of Vaitogi. Vertigo had high cliffs and a rough coastline, the shores were occupied by a compassionate and generous group of people. The old woman and her granddaughter turned back into their human form. They were welcomed by the people of Vaitogi. They fed them and offered that they make this village their new home. The old woman decided to make it her home, but she felt a connection to the sea as if it were her home too. She couldn’t stay on land, so she told the villagers that she and her granddaughter had to go back to the sea. She said that they would make village waters their permanent home. She gave the villagers a song to sing from the rocks and a promise that when they sang the song she and her granddaughter would come to visit. They returned to the sea and turned into their turtle and shark forms. To this day, the people of Vaitogi still sing the song and many villagers will tell you that they have personally seen the Turtle and Shark. To each of them the legend is as alive today as it has been.”

The informant also told me that there is a song that goes along with the legend, he said that he doesn’t know it and only certain people in the village of Vaitogi are able to know the song.

Analysis…

This legend of Samoa is different because it goes against the Samoan value of family by throwing the grandma and her granddaughter out of the house. However, this legend depicts that it is hard to be accepted into the different samoan communities but when you are accepted they treat you as family and give you the upmost respect. This legend helps to show the culture of the people of Samoa and how they do things. The grandmother wanted to be a part of the ocean so she left the village that accepted her but lived in the nearby shores and visited only when a song was sang. Also, this legend shows the importance of animals in this society. The grandmother and granddaughter were both transformed into two common sea creatures, and shark and a turtle. The informant wasn’t sure why but it is important to the story. The informant said that this story originated in Vaitogi by its natives, but he heard it from his grandma.

Crow’s Mouth

Nationality: Chinese-Taiwanese
Age: 57
Occupation: Freelance translator and editor
Residence: Taiwan
Performance Date: April 9th, 2014
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Taiwanese

Information about the Informant

My informant is a freelance editor and translator living in Taiwan. She was born in Taiwan and has lived there essentially her whole life, except for a few years in America. I asked her specifically about this proverb that I’d heard my grandma tell me when I was young as I’d never really understood it, and she told me the origin of the proverb and how it became the version that I heard as a child.

Transcript

“‘Having a crow’s mouth.’ Because we Chinese believe—no, not believe, Chinese always claim that crows are bad luck. The story’s very simple. It’s just…we feel the crow—because it’s black, so it’s bad luck. So when it—and other people say…uh…most of the time, it’s just that we believe, it may go against biology, but we believe that most of the time, crows don’t speak. That they don’t go, ‘Wah, wah, wah, wah.’ So when they do speak, it’s that bad things are about to happen. That it’s kind of like…a…prophet, can predict, can tell you that bad luck or bad things are coming. So, so, when they speak, they just…they tell you that you will have misfortune—not necessarily you, not you specifically, just somewhere around there or Taiwan or something. Just that there’ll be misfortune.

So then people started saying ‘having a crow’s mouth,’ became like ‘you’re acting like…a crow.’ That is to say, what you say, after you say this thing, it’ll actually happen. So they’ll say you have ‘a crow’s mouth.’ But if…if a person says something and then it doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t count as ‘crow’s mouth.’

Collector: “But you…you—when you say someone has the ‘mouth of a crow,’ you don’t know yet if the thing will happen. Just, as soon as they say, ‘Oh, this bad thing might happen,’ then you need to say, ‘CROW’S MOUTH.’

‘Yes.’

Collector: So you haven’t even checked, to see if it’s really happened.

‘Yes. And, when it—when it first started, ‘crow’s mouth,’ this term was…was…changed—it was that the thing the person said, if it really happened, then we would berate him, saying, “It was you having a crow’s mouth.” That is, for instance, uh, we at NTCH [informant’s work place], each of us wishes…wishes that our boss won’t, won’t do a certain thing. And then a person then, then says, ‘Oh!’—never mind, if we, let me give an example, for instance, we have our first day off, we just had, let me see, Memorial Day. And the day before we get Memorial Day off, someone says, ‘Let’s hope that…after the holiday ends, the first day we come back to work, we don’t get called to a…kind of…meeting…that starts at 8 in the morning and lasts till 7 in the evening kind of meeting.’ I’ve heard that the person who likes our English writings, that boss has that kind of meeting a lot. And then…and then—because everyone thought he was just kidding, ‘No, no, no, that won’t happen,’ and then, yeah, the first day back at work, it actually happens that there’s a meeting from 8 in the morning, as soon as you get to the office, you get called to the meeting, lasting until the afternoon, 7 o’clock, getting home at 7 pm. And then people will yell at the person who said it, ‘You have a crow’s mouth.’ However, if it was this person, it happens that every thing he says like that always has this kind of effect, that is, whenever he says something, it always has this effect, for instance, he eats lunch, that one, that one, at that place that [a coworker of hers] took you to eat once, and then, the dish that they like to eat, they say, ‘I hope they’ll have that dish today,’ and then that person says again, ‘They won’t have that dish today because it’s that…um…that—lately that dish has been going up in price. They definitely won’t use that dish.’ And then when they go, they really don’t have that dish, they’ll say, ‘You had a crow’s mouth!’ And then…um…in the future, when he talks, people will say, ‘Don’t have a crow’s mouth,’ to stop him first. So when he’s prepared to—before he, um, starts to talk, you have to say, ‘Don’t have a crow’s mouth.’ But then, that is, nowadays, um—actually, Taiwanese people are becoming more and more superstitious. Because we’re having more and more bad luck. Don’t we say a lot that we are a bad luck family? The whole country, it has more and more of a workload, things like that. Less and less money. Then everyone starts to become really nervous, whenever someone starts to say something, they say, ‘Don’t have a crow’s mouth!’ Meaning in case, meaning if you say it, then it’ll become a bad thing. So, this phrase became a sort of ‘stop someone from becoming’—it’s superstitious, in case what they say becomes a thing that, um, comes true.”

Analysis

The meaning behind the proverb and how it became a preemptive warning instead of a way to blame someone after a misfortune is pretty clear in the transcript. I do agree with her that this change from a comment or exclamation after the fact to a warning (and the time I remember hearing my grandmother tell me the proverb, she did sound pretty horrified and frantic) does reflect a change in the culture of Taiwan. I don’t believe necessarily that it is due directly to a sort of economic crisis or “bad luck” for the whole island, but it does seem to at least reflect a change in behavior from a more relaxed one where such prophecies were not welcome but tolerated, to one that actively tries to prevent these prophecies from ever being made in the first place.

Original Chinese

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King Elephant

Nationality: Latina
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 27, 2014
Primary Language: English

Context:

I had met with one of my friends for lunch, and we got to talking about games we had played as children and teenagers.

 

Interview:

Informant: Here’s something that came from the theater world. It’s a game called, I’m gonna go with “King Moose,” no it was “King Elephant.” I’ve played this game in other places where it was called King Moose or King Whatever, but the game we played was called King Elephant.

Me: Okay.

Informant: Yeah. And it was a passing game and you had a rhythm. And it was like hit your thighs clap your hands, hit your thighs, clap your hands.

Me: Oh yeah.

Informant: And we would have – there was only two signs that had to be in there, you had King Elephant who would have a trunk with like one arm over the other with the bent one holding their nose.

Me: Okay yeah.

Informant: And then you had dunce. Which was just a really crappy hat. Some people would do chopped liver which was just kind of spazzed out, ’cause you were chopped liver. You know? [Laughter] But most of the time we just played dunce. When we wanted to be mean we would do chopped liver. [Laughter] and so everyone, as many people as you have, sit around in a circle, and the first time around each person picks a sign. And its just like a word or a name and then a gesture. It doesn’t have to be animals, but I have played this game where it was only animals, and played it where it could be anything you could think of. We had a couple of ones that everyone knew, like 7-eleven was like two guns, New Yorker was a “screw-you” sign, we had fish, sometimes it would become Nazi fish, [laughter] because people would get too excited (me mainly) and instead of waving their hand like a fish swimming it would go up so it became Nazi fish. [Laughter] And like sometimes there would be inside jokes. One of my favorite ones was pink, and it was ’cause, I think it was my freshman year, and there was an improv show, and this guy in our theater troupe was supposed to like, paint something pink. And so he got up, moved his body about and was like, “Piiiink.” [She stood up and waved her body from side to side as she waved her arm in exaggerated painting motions] Like he was splashing paint everywhere, so that was one of the signs that we would always use, was pink. I mean people would do like Batman [she demonstrated the gesture], they could do whatever they want, as long as it was an easy sign to remember and do. And that sign became attached to the chair. And the whole point of the game was to get to the king elephant’s spot. And the to that, you had to knock people out. And so the king would set the rhythm and then he would call out his name and do his sign and then would call out someone else’s name and do their sign. And then it would pass to that person who would have to do their sign and then someone else’s sign.

Me: Oh yeah.

Informant: And it gets randomly passed around the circle.

Me: I’ve played something similar before.

Informant: Yeah. And if you messed up the beat, said a sign that didn’t exist, or you messed up on a sign, then you were kicked out and you had to go to the dunce’s seat, and everyone moved up a seat. And of course, you had to learn a new sign because you were in a new seat. Which of course causes more people to get kicked off, since they forget whose sign is whose. And so yeah it’s a fun game, trying to get to the king’s spot.

Me: Yeah, I’ve played something similar where there is no dunce seat, it’s just going round. It’s essentially just an elimination game, there is no king elephant or dunce. Yeah, I’ve played something similar.

Informant: Yeah we had one where it was king moose and it was just animals, but I like king elephant better because you could get really crazy. And then we would do murder round, for the people who were really into it, where the beat would go really fast. We had to come up with a new rule where you couldn’t go back and forth more than three times, ’cause what people would do, especially people who were really competitive, would simply go back and forth on and on, which became really boring for the rest of us. So we had to make a rule that you couldn’t go back and forth more than three times. It’s a fun game.

Me: Yeah it is. I haven’t played it in years.

Informant: Me neither. But it was really fun.

 

Analysis:

This is a children’s game that to me would encourage creativity, quick thinking, an understanding of rhythm, and memory. My informant went to school in Northern California, where she played the game, and I went to school in Washington, DC – o the opposite side of the country – where I also played this game, albeit slightly differently. This game is something that I played with my sports teammates before practice, and sometimes before games, as a warm-up to get the blood going, or even as an icebreaker-type game to get everyone to know each other a little bit better. The fact that it is children and young teenagers – middle and high school students – that play this game could possibly mean that it is a game that is used more often than not to bring a group of people together, such as a sports team made up of people that you might not know very well. I have fond memories of playing such games with my volleyball team back in high school, and it helped us get out some of the competitiveness and animosity that some of us may have had with and towards each other. After all, better to work that out off the court than to have it interfere with the game on the court.