Tag Archives: folktale

The End of the Evil

Nationality: Armenian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 15 2016
Primary Language: English

Title: The End of the Evil

Interviewee: Taleen Mahseredjian

Ethnicity: Armenian

Age: 20

Situation (Location, ambience, gathering of people?):

In her room in her house in Los Angeles. She is a sophomore at USC, studying neuroscience. She gets some papers ready for her essay that she will write soon. She looks up and realized that she promised to tell the interviewer a folktale. She lets out a sign of exhaustion, then go and sits on a colorful couch. The interviewee and the interviewer are close friends, brought together through the USC organizations of Helens and Trojan Knights. She is finally ready to tell the folktale.

Piece of Folklore:

 Taleen – “Once upon a time, this isn’t going to go well. Once upon a time there was hill. On the hill, there was a tree. In the tree, there was a hole in a tree. In the hole in the tree, there was a nest. In the nest there were three eggs. On the three eggs there was a Cuckoo. So one day a fox comes to the tree and says, ‘This hill is mine, this tree is mine, there is a hole in the tree.’ He calls up to the bird, ‘What do you have up there?’ The bird says, ‘It’s just me and my three baby birds, living peacefully.’ And the fox says, ‘Nope, that is too many birds. Throw one down or I am going to go get my axe and cut down the tree.’ And the bird says, ‘I found this hill, on this hill I found this tree, in this tree I made a nest, and laid three eggs. I’ll give you one if you let the rest of us be.’ So she threw down a baby bird and the fox left. A few seasons later, the fox returns. The fox comes to the tree and says, ‘This hill is mine, this tree is mine, there is a hole in the tree.’ He calls up to the bird, ‘What do you have up there?’ The bird says, ‘It’s just me and my two baby birds, living peacefully.’ And the fox says, ‘Nope, that is too many birds. Throw one down or I am going to go get my axe and cut down the tree.’ And the bird says, ‘I found this hill, on this hill I found this tree, in this tree I made a nest, and laid three eggs. I’ll give you one if you let the rest of us be.’ So she threw down a baby bird and the fox left. The mother bird starts crying and a crow hears and flies to the tree. The crow asks the mother bird why she is crying and she recounts the story. And the crow goes, ‘Don’t be naïve, this hill is everyone’s, it does not belong to a single person. Besides, where would a fox get an axe?’ The next time he comes back, don’t listen to him and he will go away. So the mother bird thanks the crow and the crow flies away. A few seasons later the fox returns. The fox comes to the tree and says, ‘This hill is mine, this tree is mine, there is a hole in the tree.’ He calls up to the bird, ‘Throw down a bird or I will cut the tree down.’ The mother bird sticks her head out and says, ‘No this is everybody’s hill, it does not belong to you. And you don’t even have an axe.’ And the fox goes, ‘Is that so? Who told you that?’ And the mother bird says, ‘The crow told me that. Go away you’re not getting anything.’ And the fox goes away and walks around for a bit thinking. He decides to get back at the crow for what he did, so he goes and he plays dead in a field. The crow flies overhead and sees the seemingly dead fox in the field. The crow swoops down to harvest his eyes. Right as the crow reaches the fox, the fox jumps up and bites the crow’s neck, trapping it. He asks, ‘Why did you tell the mother bird that I don’t have an axe, what’s it to you?’ And the crow says, ‘I’m sorry, but if you let me go I’ll make it up to you by giving you my hidden stash of treasure, if you want it it’s all yours. So the fox lets the crow go, and the crow goes to show the fox where the treasure is hidden. From above he notices that there is a farmer’s dog taking a nap under a bush. He tells the fox that my treasure is in the bush. The fox dives into the bush looking for treasure, and the dog wakes up delighted in the fact that he now has lunch. The fox then laments about his life and his past evils. The fox gets eaten by the dog. Everyone else lived happily ever after. The end.”

Analyzation:

This tale is very unique. And yet, at the same time, there are many things that are recognizable and that carry past the Armenian culture itself and into more global and mixed cultures, such as that of the United States. For example, within the story, the mother Cuckoo has their chicks. That is no coincidence. Within folklore, some cultures tend to favor the number three, while other cultures favor the number four and so on. With western countries, it appears to be the number three. That is not the only time three appears in the folktale. Within the tale, the wolf comes to the tree three times, and as in modern western jokes, the change happens the third time around. That is when the mother Cuckoo tells the fox to go away, and finally stands up for herself. Also, this story has a huge overarching sense of freeing yourself from people telling you what to do, and from people claiming that things are theirs.

Tags: Armenian, Folktale, Evil

The Story of Hǔ Gū Pó

Nationality: Taiwan
Age: 51
Occupation: Businessman
Residence: Bay Area, California
Performance Date: March 21, 2014
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English, Hokkien

[Translated from Mandarin Chinese]

Once upon a time, the hǔ gū pó (虎姑婆; a tiger spirit) lived atop a mountain. She wanted to become human, but the only way to do so was to eat children. From time to time she left her mountain to visit the village below, where she would sneak up on children from behind and eat them. After a while, the villagers discovered that wearing a mask on the backs of their heads would confuse the hǔ gū pó and prevent her from eating them. She was starting to look very human, but she still had a tiger’s tail to hide. With no more children to catch, the hǔ gū pó wandered down to the houses.

In one house lived a girl, her younger brother, and their parents, but the parents were out of town for the day. The tiger spirit tucked her tail within her pants and disguised herself as the children’s aunt.
“Your parents asked me to look after you today,” she said, and the children let her in.

In the middle of the night, the little girl woke up to a strange crunching sound.
“What are you eating?” she asked the hǔ gū pó.
“I am eating peanuts,” came the reply. “Would you like some?”
The hǔ gū pó handed over one of the little boy’s fingers.
Understanding that the tiger spirit had already eaten her brother, the little girl escaped from the house, pretending that she needed to use the bathroom.

The next morning the tiger spirit found the little girl hiding atop a tree.
“Come down,” the hǔ gū pó demanded, hungry.
“Fine,” the girl said. “But you should prepare a vat of boiling oil first, so I’ll taste better.”
The hǔ gū pó did just that.
“Now, hoist up the vat to me. I will cook myself and then jump into your mouth. Close your eyes and open your mouth.”
The tiger spirit did just that. The little girl poured the oil into the hǔ gū pó’s mouth and therefore killed her.

—

The story of hǔ gū pó is a well-known children’s folktale in Taiwan, and this is one of the many versions. It has been compared to the western tales of the Little Red Riding Hood, and “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats”. It has been adapted into a less violent nursery rhyme telling children to stop crying and to go to sleep. The informant (my father) had learned the story from his parents and in turn told it to me many times as a kid. 

When I first heard it, I did not think much of the plot points—upon retrospect, however, the story seemed unusually gruesome for a children’s tale. While “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats” has a similar premise, it is not as violent. The wolf deceives the goats and gobbles them up, but the youngest goat is able to cut open the wolf and save his siblings from its stomach, replacing the weight with rocks, which eventually drown the wolf. In the story of hǔ gū pó, the brother is not only eaten, but the sister receives the dismembered finger as food. She also kills the tiger spirit quite directly/actively. This may be a reflection on the differing cultural contexts of these two tales, in terms of ethics, etc.

Persian Folktale: Khale Suske

Nationality: Persian
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 1, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Farsi

Contextual Data: After recounting the story of Bōz Bōze Ghandí, my friend mentioned that most of the other stories he had heard growing up had been sad, darker stories. He then mentioned this story of Khale Suske, which he said he didn’t remember too well, but he again remembers hearing it from his mother — usually before or after he was about to take a bath. Originally, he hadn’t planned on telling me this tale with me, but I asked him if he wouldn’t mind sharing it anyways. The following is an exact transcript of his story.

“This is the story of Khale Suske which literally means like ‘Madam Beetle,’ and — but she’s considered to be, like, a real person. And basically, she…Her grandmother’s sick and on her deathbed, her grandmother asks her to go out and find a husband or to find love or something. So she heads out all throughout Iran and meets all these different men and the consistent question that she asks all the men is: ‘If I was your wife, how would you beat me?’ [Laughs.] And the men respond with like different violent acts. Like the butcher says, like, ‘With my cleaver.’ [Laughs.] Like… The… I don’t know, the carpenter says, ‘With this piece of wood,’ or something. And… And all the male characters have, like, animal personas and so she meets, Alā Mooshed, which is Mr. Mouse and she asks Alā Mooshed, ‘How would you beat me?’ And he says, ‘I wouldn’t beat you, I would hit you gently with my tail.’ And she falls in love with the mouse. And, you know, as they’re I don’t know, courting or whatever, as a sign of her love, Khale Suske makes, like, a bowl of soup for the mouse. And as the mouse is drinking it, he falls in the soup and drowns. And that’s the end of the story [Laughs.]”

– End Transcript – 

My friend doesn’t quite understand the significance of this story—he said that he was always a little confused by it. But he said it was similar to many of the Persian folktales that he had heard growing up in that the ending was dark and rather depressing. He said that this might have ties back to Islam as a sort of “culture of sadness.” He said, in particular, that the love stories that he had heard tended to have these tragic endings. He laughed during parts of the story because from a modern American perspective, he found the casualness with which some of the ideas (e.g. wife-beating) were mentioned to be somewhat ridiculous.

Certainly, there may be a validity to this idea of the “culture of sadness,” but beyond this, it mainly seems as though my informant recalled this story because of the fond memories that he associated it with. He couldn’t remember all the particulars of the story, but he clearly remembered when he was told it, which hints at why he might find it meaningful.

Again, though he wasn’t sure about the origins or the significance of the story, one thought is that it is a tale meant to bring attention to the repression and abuse of women in Islamic or Iranian culture. Khale Suske attempts to find happiness by seeking out a husband that will not abuse her, and when she finally does, he dies. The story is certainly tragic, and so sharing this tale — particularly in the modern day — could be a possible way of bringing attention to these types of gender inequalities.

The Sparrow Story

Nationality: Korean
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: May 1, 2013
Primary Language: English
Language: Korean

Interview Extract:

Informant: “Well, we have swallows in our house, like a nest on the side of our house, and the swallows come every year, for like four years now. And um, my dad told me this story about swallows, and basically, there were these two brothers, one very rich and the other very poor. The richer brother was annoyed by the poor brother ‘cause he was a um, he was a beggar and he’s always coming around asking for something and finally, like the rich brother, I think he was also the older brother, but the rich brother stopped giving him food and things.

Then um, the uh, poor brother noticed a swallows’ nest on his house, and saw a baby bird like, fall out and break its wing, so he took care of the bird. I think he just like, had nothing else to do.

Then like, all of a sudden, all these pumpkins start growing in his yard from a pumpkin seed, all this other good agriculture starts growing. And the poor brother was curious how he had all this food, but also he was very grateful. Then, uh, the sparrow got better, and it flew away. And then when the rich brother saw the good crops, he got jealous, so he tried to find a sparrow and break its wing or its leg so he could nurse it back to health so he could get good crops too. But of course, it didn’t work.

The sparrow only left a pumpkin seed on the poor brother’s garden because he was good and did not expect anything in return. So the moral of the story I guess, is when you just do good things, good things will happen to you.”

Me: “So is this a traditional Korean folktale?”

Informant: “Yeah, my dad told me about it just recently because we had birds next to our house, and we’re not supposed to kill nature, even though people would want to crush the nest because the birds can poop, you know, and make a mess, but apparently, it’s like special to have sparrows. They’re very symbolic in Korea I guess, so we keep the nest, and they just come back every year.”

Analysis:

Most of us would have heard stories similar to this one, where the younger or poorer sibling does a deed out of the kindness of their heart and is rewarded for it, while the jealous, richer, and usually older sibling will try to do the same but fail because of their avarice in some way. This theme, that the good-natured underprivileged character will prevail, is seen in Indian and European folktales as well and is extremely popular. People like to see the kind characters succeeding in the end and gaining the wealthy, happily-ever-after ending, especially when it doesn’t come true often in real life.

The sparrow was the equivalent of a fairy godmother in this story, and important to my informant because she saw the sparrows in her own house. They are also what spurred her father to tell her this story, a fact that she obviously valued since as a college senior, adults don’t usually relate fairy tales to her anymore. She clearly cherished the memory of her dad taking the time to tell the story, as well as the sweetness of the sparrows flying back to their house year after year.

My informant’s parents are from Korea, so they would have seen sparrows often, and it’s interesting that even though they moved thousands of miles, the same story is relevant because the same type of bird is found in California. My informant would not have heard the story if they lived in another state possibly, and neither would have I. This emphasizes how some folklore is spread throughout the world because of similar surroundings, and why some of is changed in order to adapt with any differences.

The Jersey Devil

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 50
Occupation: Professor of Creative Writing
Residence: Monterey, CA
Performance Date: 4/8/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio

My informant grew up in Hudson County, New Jersey, in the 1960s and 1970s, spending most of his childhood in Secaucus. He remembers having friends whose family members had ties to the mob, and in fact his own father worked as a Teamster (a cement mixer driver, specifically) for the Teamsters local 560, the chapter of the Teamsters union run by notorious Italian mob boss Tony Provenzano. He does not recall that living in such a mob run area ever caused him or his family any anxiety, it was simply a fact of life in Hudson County.

Though my informant lived for almost twenty years in Ohio during and after college, and now resides in California, his New Jersey accent slips back into his voice when he tells stories about New Jersey. This story was recorded at a family gathering in California when some of my informant’s family from the east coast were visiting.

The Jersey Devil

The Jersey Devil is a mythic creature that reportedly roams the Pine Barrens (a stretch of undeveloped wilderness) in New Jersey. My informant related to me the tale he heard as a kid of how the devil came to be.

During the Revolutionary War days, the Pine Barrens were a place that the outcasts of society, those too poor to afford better, lived. The tale goes that a poor couple with many children lived there, and they were so poor they could barely feed the family. With another child on the way, the husband decided to make a deal with the Devil (as in Satan of Christian lore, not the Jersey devil) that if he performed certain tasks the Devil would grant them enough wealth to feed the family and allow them to move out of the Pine Barrens to a better place.

My informant couldn’t remember the tasks the Devil gave the man exactly, only that instead of doing them, the husband tried to fake that he had done them somehow.  The Devil was, naturally, not fooled. So he cursed the couple’s unborn child. The wife gave birth to a hideous beast with cloven hooves and leathery wings, and as soon as it was born it flew up the chimney and out into the Pine Barrens.

The beast was given the name “the Jersey devil,” and it is rumored to prowl the Pine Barrens to this day, attacking people and eating children, as such beasties will do. It is well known in New Jersey that one should never go into the Pine Barrens alone, or at night, because the Jersey devil might get you.

What would appear to me to be a scary story that could be told to children to keep them from wandering off into dangerous woods and getting lost, actually has a more important message for the residents of Hudson County, New Jersey, where my informant was from. He explained that the Pine Barrens are nowhere near Hudson County, so to him the tale is a parable for not double-crossing the mob. Replace Satan in the story with the mob, and you see the warning: that if one doesn’t fulfill their side of a bargain with the mob, they may not take it out on you, they might take it out on your loved ones; your family.

Appearances in Authored Literature

The Jersey devil has become such a beloved part of New Jersey popular culture that it has most famously become the mascot for the New Jersey Devils Hockey Team. Reported sightings of the creature, and even people who claim it attacked them, keeps the story alive and in the public consciousness. A piece on the Jersey devil appears in the popular travel book Weird NJ, where a different version of the tale tells of a woman who, after having 13 children by a jobless drunk, in a fit of rage asked the heavens to turn her next child into a devil.

The devil even made it into an episode of the X-Files, a popular show during the 1990s that featured two FBI agents who exclusively investigated reports of paranormal phenomena. In that episode, sightings of the devil were attributed to a Neanderthal-like creature that may have been the product of an evolutionary mutation.

Cited

Carter, Chris, prod. The X-Files: The Jersey Devil. Perf. David Duchovney and Gillian Anderson. 1993. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. <www.netflix.com>.

Moran, Mark, and Mark Sceurman. Weird N.J.: Your Travel Guide to New Jersey’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. New York: Sterling Publishers, 2009. Print.

New Jersey Devils Team Site. National Hockey League, 2012. Web. 25 Apr. 2012. <http://devils.nhl.com/>.