Tag Archives: cautionary tale

Anhui Province Legend

Age: 18

TEXT

Interviewer: “Okay, would you like to introduce yourself?”

MC: “Yeah, hi, my name is ANONYMOUS, and I’m a freshman student at USC University.”

MC: “My story is set in a park in my hometown, and in the park, there’s a trail and along the trail there’s a cave called the cow nose cave. This cave has two holes that are kind of shaped like a cow’s nose, and there’s a legend about how it’s dangerous if you put your arm or fingers into the hole, as there might be a very mysterious force that basically sucks your whole arm in and it can be very dangerous. So kids are advised not to put their arms into the hole.”

Interviewer: “Was that a story, or like a legend that was always around or more of a family legend?”

MC: “It’s known in our region and it started like – actually I don’t know when it started but I heard it from my parents.”

Interviewer: “Ohhh I see.”

MC: “Yeah they told me not to put my arms in there, yeah.”

CONTEXT

My relationship with this informant is that she is my classmate for this anthropology lecture. My informant is an international freshman student at USC, originally from China. As mentioned in the text, her relationship to this piece stems from her hometown, in which a notable landmark has a surrounding legend that was passed down to her by her parents.

ANALYSIS

Considering this piece is set in the real world and tied to a real location, this is a legend that functions as a cautionary tale for children. In my opinion, it’s plausible that this legend started from a worried parent who could not supervise their curious children 24/7 – rather than explaining all the actual dangers of sticking your arm into an unknown hole, like injuries from getting stuck or getting bit by creatures that may be inside, replacing this with a supernatural force is a more vivid and memorable warning to children. As this legend spread informally to other children and generations after, a cultural value that may come specifically for this region in China is that an ordinary cave is now enshrined forever as a supernatural landmark with a distinct legend.

Mami Wata

Interview: “Essentially its like a water spirit that protects people — but she’s kind of like a mermaid-siren fusion. And she is there to protect people and keep people safe, but also she can lure people in that are ignorant, or other people in that are looking for trouble. And then she’ll trap them in the water and then take them.

I think its kind of along the lines of legends like the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot, like they’re native, and they’re there for the land.

I think the reason, like historically the reason it was probably birthed is because of slavery, but it’s just turned into a thing that people are very afraid of now. Even now like my parents, if I were to text my mommy like: can you tell me about Mami Wata, she’d be like: don’t say that name. So its very taboo.

In Terms of experiences, like stories that I heard from family and friends, you know they’ll be out late walking by the beach when they shouldn’t be, like they’re sneaking out of the house or whatever. They’re near the ocean and they start to hear these chants calling them in, and they’re lured in and they go deeper and further into the water and then they’re attacked.

Context: The informant is from a Nigerian Family, but was raised in the US. She remembers hearing the story on multiple occasions from her parents or other Nigerian friends and family.

Analysis: As mentioned by the informant, the legend seems to bear some similarities to guardian spirits seen commonly in folklore, with Mami Wata apparently interested in protecting both the beaches and the people from dangers, although she is not always friendly. The informant also mentioned the theory that the legend either arose, or took on new meaning with the arrival of the slave trade in Nigeria, as a cautionary tale to keep people away from the shore.

A Rattlesnake’s Rattle Has the Devil in It 

Text: The belief: the rattle of a rattlesnake is associated with the devil. You should never keep one. The legend that authorizes it: a man once found a rattle in the brush, thought it looked cool, and slipped it into his pocket. He carried it with him for some time. It made him slowly insane. He could not sleep well and would sometimes hear the rattle shaking in his pocket when no one else could hear it. One night he got up in the middle of the night, took a knife, and killed his entire family. He was found in the morning on his porch, rattle in hand, without memory of what he had done. 

Context: Told to me by my roommate JS, who attributes the story to his grandmother. JS’s grandmother is a devout Catholic and Tejano, who grew up in Texas. The legend, as his grandmother framed it, is a general cautionary tale, not something that happened to anyone she knew personally. JS does not believe the rattle is cursed but says he would not pick one up. 

Analysis: This is a classic example of a folkloric rule and a story that demonstrates the consequences of breaking it. The underlying idea is that the rattlesnake’s danger does not leave when the snake dies. The rattle keeps it, and whoever picks it up carries it home. The legend’s shape (find, want, keep, lose your mind, lose your family) is familiar among Latin American cursed-object stories, where the trouble begins whenever someone takes home an object that should have been left where it was. The story’s real work is what it did to JS, and through him to me: neither of us believes a rattle is literally dangerous, and yet neither of us would ever pick one up. The “devil” reading the grandmother gives the rattle is a Catholic name for an older unease, as the rattlesnake as a charged figure predates even the arrival of Catholics to the new world. The geography is also significant: the Texas-Mexico border is where the snakes have a real material presence, and Anglo and Tejano traditions have been swapping folkloric material about them for some time. The dangers of a live rattlesnake are clear, but the story extends the good form of avoiding them even to dead rattlesnakes. 

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Text

“I think it was basically like, a boy would be outside playing, and he would always, you know, yell that a wolf was coming, or a wolf had done something bad, or he would do something bad and blame it on the wolf that was there. So he kept crying that there was a wolf, or yelling out that there was a wolf, and then people started- they’d always come running and there was no wolf, and he [the boy] thought that was really funny. And then eventually the wolf DID come, and when he cried that there was a wolf, nobody came to pay attention to him because he had lied so many times, and then the wolf ate him.”

Context 

J, my mother, currently lives in Seattle, Washington in the United States, but grew up in various towns in Ontario, Canada. She is the oldest of three siblings, and first heard this tale from her father when she was very young. When asked about the context in which she first heard the story, J provided the following: 

“I’m having a little bit of difficulty remembering the exact context, but Grandpa always was a big, like, moralistic storyteller, so he would use examples. So often when [her brother’s name] and I would fight, um, we would try to accuse each other of all kinds of outlandish crazy things. And, you know, sometimes I, as the older sibling, would try to work things to my advantage. And Grandpa would get frustrated with us because he knew that we were exaggerating or blaming each other for things. So he would basically talk to us about the story of the boy who cried wolf, because he was trying to enforce in us the idea that if we exaggerated or said things that weren’t true, that, you know, when something actually did happen we wouldn’t be believed.”

Analysis

As J stated in her own interpretation of this story, The Boy Who Cried Wolf fits closely within the common notion of a tale: a story with a moral value or lesson that is told primarily to children. In this instance, the tale’s moral is cautionary, showing a young boy who transgresses numerous social boundaries and is punished (eaten by the wolf) as a result. In a slightly simplified application of Levi-Strauss’s paradigmatic theory of structuralism, this tale features a binary opposites pair of honesty and dishonesty that correlate to safety/community and danger/isolation respectively. When considering J’s observations about truth-telling, this tale ties into the trust involved in sharing knowledge within a group; the boy’s lies not only made him an unreliable source of information, but threatened the integrity of the information passed around the group as a whole, and as a result, the boy was cast out through a refusal to believe his cries for help. J’s statement that the boy found lying funny also suggests that finding humor in serious situations or not taking things seriously is frowned upon in her family and society.

Mikey Life Cereal Urban Legend

Text 

“So, in the 70s and 80s, one of the more popular television commercials I remember was for Life Cereal. And there was a little kid in it, and basically it was like he hated everything, and then they gave him this bowl of Life Cereal and he started to eat it and it was like ‘Mikey won’t like it, he like- he hates everything!’ And then it’s like ‘Oh Mikey! He likes it!’

…I don’t know how this started, but there was some urban legend that started to go around that Mikey had died. And he died because he ate Pop Rocks and then drank a can of Coca Cola. And apparently either exploded his insides or something like that and he had died.”

Context

J, my mother, currently lives in Seattle, Washington in the United States, but grew up in various towns in Ontario, Canada. She recalls that she first heard this legend from her friends on the playground when she was relatively young. J gave the additional context that this Life Cereal commercial would air often during Saturday morning cartoons, which meant that “all the kids knew who Mikey was.” As a result of the legend, she and the other kids on the playground would dare each other to eat Pop Rocks and drink Coca Cola, to objections of “‘No, Mikey died from that!’” She concluded telling me the legend with the following:

“I do believe it was eventually dispelled, I don’t think Mikey was dead? Um, [laughs] but actually to this day I don’t even really know! All I know is that drinking Coke and eating Pop Rocks is apparently really bad for you, can kill you.” 

Analysis

J’s recollections indicate that this urban legend was primarily a piece of children’s folklore. Drawing from Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: an Introduction chapter author Jay Mechling, this legend seems to be an example of children experimenting with disorder and parody. By taking a benign commercial featuring a child eating cereal and twisting it into a gruesome urban legend, my mother and her peers were able to discuss the concept of death and dangerous/unhealthy foods in a way that exaggerates, mocks, and inverts adult ways of perceiving these topics. That this legend also sparked a form of play (daring each other to eat Pop Rocks and drink Coca Cola) further allowed them to explore a sense of danger in the safe proximity of adults. This legend could also be another example of how Mechling discussed commercial foods being a particular target for ‘antithetical’ children’s folklore as a representation of underlying fears about bodily safety and changes.