Tag Archives: children’s story

Aunt Margy

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Laguna Niguel, California
Performance Date: 4/18/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

My informant is Persian and he told me a story that his mother used to tell him when he was little. In Farsi, a lot of the words in the story rhyme and flow a bit better than the english translation.

“The story is called Aunt Margy. So Aunt Margy had a lot of chickens and a rooster. Every morning she would take them out of the chicken coop to come and eat their food. At night, Aunt Margy asked them kindly to go to their chicken coop, so they can stay safe and away from the wild animals. One night, Aunt Margy went to go put them in the coop, but the rooster was very arrogant and didn’t want to listen to her. He was running around and didn’t go in. Aunty Margy decided to let him stay out and deal with the consequences that night. It started to rain very hard and Aunty Margy decided to keep him out and get punished. The next day the rooster did the same thing and he was very sick and he kept sneezing. He was sitting by Aunty Margy’s door desperately. Aunt Margy told him, ‘See what happens when you don’t listen to me?’ So she brought him in, made him some soup, and he felt better. Next day when Aunty Margy was calling for everyone to go in the coop, he was the first one to go in and he learned his lesson. This was one of the stories that my mom used to tell me as a kid and it was obviously in Farsi. In Farsi, a lot of the words rhyme, so it was meant for kids.”

This story takes place in a fictional world where roosters can talk, and is intended to entertain and educate its audience. These attributes make the story of Aunt Margy a tale. It also follows Axel Olrik’s Epic Laws of Folk Narratives. The first one is that the tale does not open or close abruptly. The second is the use of repetition. Repeating things in a story helps the audience follow along easier, especially if they missed information the first time around. Another law that the tale of Aunty Margy follows is that it never has more than two characters to a scene. It becomes difficult for children to keep track of characters when there are too many introduced at once.

The Crows and the Serpent

Nationality: Indian-American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/16
Primary Language: English

Piece:

The Crows and the Serpent

This story is from the Panchatantra tales. In indian culture when the kids are going to bed, parents will read out of this book. All of the stories have morals to them. In that story pretty much what happens is there are a bunch of crows living in a tree. One day a family of snakes moves under the tree. So then obviously the crow family is really mad about that, because snakes eat crows. So the next day crow parents go out in the morning to search for food for their kids. They come back later and all their babies are gone–because the snakes ate them. So then they have more kids and decide to come up with a way for the snakes to not attack them. So then the mom decides to stay in the nest when while the dad searches for food–but because she’s alone, the snakes attack her and eat all their babies again. So they have to come up with a new plan to save their next babies. So they call their friends over who are foxes. They tell the foxes about how the snakes keep eating their babies. The fox tells them to use their brain. He says that all the royal families bathe really early in the morning, and leave their jewelry on plates. So he tells the crows to steal one of the necklaces and drop it into the snakes’ home. So the crows wake up really early the next day, before the snakes are awake, and steal a necklace from one of the royal families. Some guards are chasing them as they fly away, and then they drop the necklace into the snake hole. The guards then have to kill the snakes to get the jewelry out of the whole, which they do, and the crows stop having their babies eaten.

This moral of this story is to use intelligence over physical strength.

Informant & Context:

My informant for this story is an Indian-American student at the University of Southern California who grew up in Seattle, Washington. She grew up in a fairly culturally traditional Indian household. This story comes from a set of stories that many Indian parents read to their children.

Thoughts:

The thing that stands out to me the most about this story is that the crows are the heroes. In many stories in western culture, crows are often the antagonists—the same can be said for foxes.

The story has a very concise message: Use intelligence to solve your problems instead of strength.