Tag Archives: devil

Bridge Devil

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student
Residence: Fontana, CA
Performance Date: 4/25/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant: Liz is a 24-year-old student born and raised in Southern California. Her mother is from a town near Guadalajara, Mexico.

Main Piece: “When I was maybe like…8 or 10, my mom, she shared with my sister and I, she shared that at the ranch where her grandmother lived, there was a bridge nearby. But sometimes at night, when you went to cross the bridge, the devil would appear. And he had the…head of a pig, legs of a rooster, and some other part of a goat. He would ask questions and try to hurt you. Now, she never saw the devil, but she had a friend who did. And the friend was lucky because she got away before the devil got to her.”

Background Information about the Performance: The informant was deeply affected by this piece as a child. She was afraid of leaving the house after dark, even though she did not live near the bridge in Guadalajara.

Context of Performance: This piece was performed by the informant’s mother when her children were acting irresponsibly.

Thoughts: I find it interesting how similar this piece is to stories about bridge trolls, especially given that the devil would ask questions.

Brandon’s Satan worship

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 26
Performance Date: April 1, 2017
Primary Language: English

So he started studying like he started reading books about Satanism, he was just… he was just really interested in it and it was like probably about a month that he was really into it like buying books and like reading into it and I was like “You need to stop this, like this is creepy, I don’t like it.” So I was against it but, so during that month some weird things were happening. So there were umm… a bunch of flies that would just come into his… just his room, only his room and they would I don’t know where they would come in from but they were just like everywhere in his room. And then one night we were asleep and in the middle of the night like dead silent his guitar just like knocks over and it woke us up because it like you know it made the guitar noise, that was creepy. And the whole month we both had really creepy dreams, in our dreams it was always something about the room, like something was getting us. It was really creepy.

My informant lived through these strange events. She told me this story after the topic of Satan and devil worshippers came up. I found this story interesting because my informant was telling this story about Brandon, an ex-boyfriend who cheated on her. Hearing these strange things about him made me wonder if this was part of the reason for their break-up or part of her method of rationalizing the break-up, as folklore often does with things we do not understand.

The Devil in the Wall

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 26
Performance Date: April 1, 2017
Primary Language: English

Okay I was really upset about something maybe it was something that happened in school or dance, I don’t know but I was like crying in my room, it was when we had the bunk beds and I was on your bed crying, crying, crying umm… for like an hour or something and you know how we used to have that umm.. The wall used to have like some sort of texture to it. What is that called? Oh no that was the ceiling but it was the wall. The wall had a crack and I was crying, crying, crying and I looked to my right and I swear, it was the lighting and there was a crack in the wall and it looked like the devil’s face like for sure and I told dad and he, I mean you saw it too right? And it was creepy because I had never seen it before, I had never noticed it before until that moment and then uhh… so he ended up just knocking a hole in it and then like re-plastering it to get rid of the creepy devil face.

My informant experienced this piece of folklore and traumatized her to this day. She informed me about this story as everyone was talking about weird ghost stories or satanic stories over dinner. This piece of folklore scared me when I heard it because the informant was talking about the room I used to sleep in every night and I had no idea about the crack in the wall.

Mexican Elderly Idiom

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: Middle-Aged
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Los Angeles, CA, USA
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

“The second one is, umm… More knows the devil, because he’s old, than to be a devil. Do you want me to tell you in Spanish? ‘Mas el diablo por viejo que por diablo.’ ”

 

And in what context would you say that? Like, what would you say that in reference to?

 

“Umm, that, uhh, we need to pay attention to the old people. That the old people is, is they know the way and we need to listen to them.”

 

Analysis: Another short and sweet proverb, this one celebrates old age in a very tongue-in-cheek sort of way. The proverb proclaims that the Devil knows more about being the Devil from simply living into old age than by being the Devil in the first place. In other words, this proverb would seem to reveal that, in rural Mexican culture, learned wisdom gleaned through experience is superior to natural-born intellect. This would suggest a deference to rural elders and a suspicion of up-and-comer types in the informant’s culture.

Devil in Angel’s Clothing

Nationality: Iranian-American
Age: 78
Occupation: Retired
Residence: La Canada, CA, USA
Performance Date: March 12, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Persian/Farsi

Informant Tahereh Behshid is 78 years old and recalled a proverb she was taught as a young child.

I wanted to know if you could possibly talk about some proverbs you might have used when you were a child in Iran, and the context that you would use those proverbs in. So… do you have an example for me?

“Yes, my name is Tahereh Behshid, and the thing we usually heard from parents, it was [speaking in Farsi] ‘shaytan delah baseh fereshte.’ The devil in angel’s clothing. That means you watch out for the people, they come to you, around you. When they act very nice to you, you have to see what their intention is. So… that’s what it was.”

Analysis: Like many proverbs passed from parent to child, this one deals with imparting a valuable life lesson in very few words. Tahereh grew up as a poor woman in a rapidly modernizing urban area of Iran’s capital, and so with the influx of strangers to her hometown, this advice was likely to be especially valuable. She taught the same lessons, albeit in English, to her own children in the United States, who then passed them on to their children.