Tag Archives: death

Promise from Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque

Nationality: Irish/Italian
Age: 85
Occupation: English Professor
Residence: Massachusetts
Performance Date: March 13, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Italian, Spanish

My informant told me of an old Irish belief that he knew called the Promise from Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque:

“If you go to Mass and Communion on nine successive first Fridays of the month you will be allowed to repent your sins on your deathbed.”

My informant made a point of making sure that I knew that Margaret Mary was “Blessed” and not a “Saint”. He told me that he personally had never done what the belief said, but that he still has some time left to do so before he plans on dying.

Again, the connection between Irish superstitions/beliefs and religion is very clear. This, like many others, is also linked to fear. In this case it is the fear of dying and not being forgiven for your sins.

A version of a similar belief in which going to church nine fridays in a row will grant you the ability to repent your sins appears in authored literature in:

Kippley, John F. A Catholic Prayer Book. Lulu, 2005. Print.

Comic Culture

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, Texas
Performance Date: March 16, 2012
Primary Language: English

Jonathan “Scotty” Miller

Houston, Texas

March 16, 2012

Folklore Type: Joke

Informant Bio: Scotty is my good friend from high school. He is a twenty year old Sophomore and Physics major at the University of Houston. Everyone in my group friends is smart, but we have labeled Scotty as the super smart one among the boys because his major sounds the hardest. It is however extremely debatable as to whether or not this is true. Scotty is one of the nicest and calmest people I have ever met. His house is the one we always go to hang out.

Context: There was a group of four of us at Scotty’s house playing the latest version of Super Mario. I asked my friend Isaac about gaming lore, and then I asked Scotty about Comic Book lore as he is our comic book expert.

Item: No one in comics stays dead. One of the old sort of comic thing was like… I think it was like. You know Captain America, right? Well he had this side-kick named Bucky, but he died. They would say no one in comics stays dead except Jason Todd, Bucky and Uncle Ben. Jason Todd is one of the old Robins, but he died. But then they brought Jason Todd. So it was no one stays dead in comics except Bucky and Uncle Ben. Then they brought back Bucky so it was just no one stays dead in comics but Uncle Ben.

Informant Analysis: I don’t know comics are just kind of like ridiculous. They aren’t really any hard rules you know?

Analysis: This is a way for comic book lovers to laugh at their medium of entertainment. It is also a way to connect to each other through their medium that is usually read solitarily. For Scotty and probably other it is also a way to deal with and point out the fact that there are no rules for what they love to read. It is a medium that one just has to roll with its punches and randomness.

 Alex Williams

Los Angeles, California

University of Southern California

ANTH 333m   Spring 2012

Thai folk belief: Butterflies carry souls

Nationality: Thai-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student (Fine Arts)
Residence: Northridge, CA
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Thai

My informant had a personal experience with this folk belief while attending her grandmother’s funeral in Thailand. She and the other funeral-goers were kneeling in prayer in front of the Buddhist temple where the funeral was being held, when she noticed a black butterfly fly over her grandmother’s coffin as the monks chanted a sutra to help the soul pass on.

When my informant mentioned the butterfly to an aunt afterwards, the aunt told her that butterflies are containers for souls, and that they carry souls away. The timing of the butterfly’s flight, as well as the fact that she’d never seen a butterfly in Thailand before, convinced my informant of the validity of this folk belief.

My informant suggested that it may be comforting to someone mourning a death to equate their loved one, and maybe death itself, with a butterfly, which is almost universally considered to be beautiful and graceful.

The main religion in Thailand is Buddhism, which rejects the idea of an unchanging self or soul, and so the soul’s flight in the butterfly could be considered the luminal stage between death in one body and reincarnation in the next. Also, while human/alive, we can’t fly—it could be exciting to think that in death, we are able to rise beyond the limitations of our past human bodies.

Death Joke

Performance Date: April 2007

When I die, I want to go peacefully, like my grandfather.
I do not want to be screaming in terror like the rest of the people in the car.

This death-humor joke, which my informant said he remembers from Saturday Night Live, is a fairly simple one to analyze structurally.  According to folklorist Elliot Oring, the source of humor in jokes is the presence of “appropriate incongruities.”  The joke introduces apparent incongruities – ideas that seem out of place, impossible, obscene, or otherwise wrong in some way – and the punchline delivers appropriateness or creates both appropriateness and incongruity at once.  However, this joke is unique in that it reverses the order of the appearance of appropriateness and incongruity.  Whereas traditionally the incongruity comes first and is justified by the punchline, here the first line (and part of the second) makes sense and the punchline reveals the sad incongruity – the old man fell asleep at the wheel.  If the situation is sad, though, then why is it funny?  Certainly a joke like this would not be funny for someone who has recently lost a loved one in a car accident.  However, humor is a popular outlet in many societies for dealing with the concept of death, particularly societies like America who do not share universal beliefs about death and the afterlife.

Korean Superstition – The Ill at Funerals

Nationality: Korean
Age: 51
Occupation: Nurse
Residence: Cerritos, California
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: Korean
Language: English

“The physically ill in Korea do not attend funerals in fear that death will find them.”

 

My informant first heard about this superstition when about a decade ago, she was puzzled by her mother-in-law’s unwillingness to attend her (as in the mother-in-law’s) brother’s funeral.  When Gwi questioned her opposition to attending, her mother-in-law who is from the rural city of Daegu in Korea, explained that she was already ill.  Spirits at the funeral could sense an ill person’s presence and would follow her home.  She was afraid of the spirits following her after the funeral to take her with them, so she avoided going.  This kind of superstition is wide spread among the country folks in Korea.  They would never attend a funeral no matter how beloved the deceased was to them if they are ill because they believed the spirits would mark them as the next to die.

If I were battling a fatal disease, I would feel too vulnerable to go to such a gloomy and morbid ceremony.  Not necessarily that I believe spirits would follow me home, but I would be afraid to watch a funeral because death would just seem so real and closer to me.  However, I would still find the courage to attend a beloved’s funeral because perhaps I may find consolation in that death does not have to be so scary and remote as many people make it out to be.