Tag Archives: legend

The Tortoise and the Hare

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BR: What comes to mind is the Tortoise and the Hare. A tortoise and a hare were competing in a race to see which animal was faster. The hare was so confident that he would win that he bragged for weeks to the entire village that he could win with almost no effort. On the day of the race, the hare easily breezed by the tortoise and seemed like the obvious winner. After gaining a few miles on the tortoise, he even decided to take a nap in the final leg of the race to gloat. The tortoise, however, never gave up and steadily walked toward the finish line. While the hare was napping, the tortoise was able to catch up to the hare and was mere steps away from victory by the time the hare finally woke up. The hare was too late. He lunged at the finish line just in time to watch the tortoise cross it, and ultimately lost the race solely due to his arrogance. The moral of the story is that slow and steady wins the race, and that arrogance can be your downfall.

Context:

BR: The first time I remember hearing this story was in first grade. My teacher read this story to our class as we sat and listened on the alphabet carpet. I have since heard many renditions, and think that the story’s central message is a valuable one. 

Analysis: 

The Tortoise and the Hare is one of the oldest fairy tales, going as far back as 400 B.C. and is reportedly part of Aesop’s fables. Most of these stories feature animal characters that undergo some kind of trial or adventure and the story provides a moral lesson. In this case, the lesson is that being slow and steady is the way to victory. I’ve heard people say that it isn’t true that going slow and steady is better, that the hare would have run the race if it didn’t fall asleep. So perhaps the moral of the story is more that being arrogant and overconfident can cost you.

The Nain Rogue Demon

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AB: From what I know – which isn’t the most accurate account – is that the Nain Rouge is a disgusting hairy and horned demon. The story goes that the first time it showed up was before some battle where the demon danced on the corpses of the dead soldiers and turned the river bloody. Since then, it shows up prior to devastating events in the city as like a bad omen. The 1967 Race Riots were the most common example I heard since my grandparents moved out of the city due to them.

Context:

AB: The Nain Rouge is one of those myths not really in circulation in my family. I know growing up it was used as a boogeyman for a child’s bad behavior, which deviates pretty heavily from the original myth of it being a foreboding omen. I mostly just thought it was my parents needing a local legend derived from their parent’s catholic backgrounds. I lived in the suburbs surrounding Detroit but I did live close enough to the Rouge River for cultural osmosis to propagate. Myth went from chastising bad behavior to a reason to be back home before sundown (I used to bike up and down the Rouge River at Hines Park). Eventually my parents kinda just grew out of it, I didn’t really believe in it so they stopped using it.

Analysis:

There are a lot of similar boogeyman type stories in American folklore. Other common examples include stories like the Jersey Devil. The most likely origin for these stories is from somebody who witnessed a tragedy and wants some way to rationalize what occurred. Seeing a battlefield is damaging to the psyche, it isn’t too unbelievable that people would tell stories about the aftermath. As the stories grow popular, there are more “sightings” of the monster because more people know about it. Though, these stories are rarely believed, and like AB mentioned, are mostly used to scare children into behaving.

The Story of the Prague Golem

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AG: The story goes that a rabbi in Prague was fed up with the pogroms and violence against the Jews in their ghetto. He created a man out of clay and imbued him with the word “emet” to describe god and it became a fierce protector of the ghetto. It successfully fought off violent goyim for some time, but eventually turned on its creators, and went on a violent rampage against the ghetto. It was destroyed by scratching off the ‘e’ in “emet” changing god to “death”. The ghetto in Prague was a real place that existed for hundreds of years. The Jews there had once been slaughtered by the local population

Context:

AG: I’d definitely heard the word and the general concepts all over the media since I was a kid. “Golem” is a common association for any sort of creature made out of inorganic materials. I didn’t become more familiar with the specific legend until I played the video game “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”, which includes a scenario where the Jews of a Nazi concentration camp have built a golem, and you have to help them complete it. I studied it in more detail when I took an ancient to late middle ages Jewish history class in undergrad.

Analysis:

The story of the golem is prevalent throughout Jewish culture as a protector. While some Jewish people genuinely believe in the creation of the golem, the story more serves as a lesson of how only God can create life. This belief is reflected in other Abrahamic religions as well. In Islam, it is forbidden to draw faces due to a similar belief.

“Johnny, I want my liver back…”

Genre: Folk Narrative – Ghost Story

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One day a boy named Johnny is told by his mother to go to the butcher’s to get some liver for dinner. He takes the five dollars she gives him and heads off toward town, taking a shortcut through the local cemetery. When he gets to the butcher’s shop, Johnny is distracted by a stand of comic books, where the newest edition of his favorite series is on sale for only five dollars. Without thinking, he immediately buys the comic book and begins to read it, losing track of time until the sun begins to set.

Jonny realizes he’s made a mistake: he now has no money to buy the liver for dinner, and his mother is going to be furious that he spent it on a comic book! He has no choice but to hurry home, cutting again through the graveyard. But on his way home, just as he passes a freshly-dug grave, Johnny has an idea – a way to get a liver for free.

“What kind of liver is this?” his mother asks when he gets home and gives her the liver. “It looks old… you’re sure you asked for the freshest cut?”

Johnny tells her that he’s sure it’s fresh and it’s what the butcher gave him. Johnny’s mother finally accepts the liver and tells him to wait upstairs while she makes his favorite meal for dinner: spaghetti and liver.

While Johnny is waiting in his room, he begins to feel sick, thinking about the graveyard, the fresh grave, and the liver currently being prepared into spaghetti. When his mother calls him down for dinner, Johnny feels too sick to eat and tries to just go to sleep.

But late that night, once his mother has gone to bed, Johnny hears a low call…

Johnny, I want my liver back…

Johnny sits up straight in bed. The call sounds like it’s coming from the direction of the graveyard. He feels even more sick now and hides under his covers, but then he hears a thudding on the front door…

Johnny, I want my liver back… I’m outside your front door…

Johnny is crying now in fear, desperately wishing he hadn’t spent his five dollars on a comic book and instead had gone to the butcher’s.

He hears the front door creak open and then slow footsteps coming up the stairs, getting closer… and closer… and closer… Then there’s a rattling on his bedroom door.

Johnny, I want my liver back… I’m outside your bedroom…

Johnny runs to his closet and shuts the door, trying to hide but knowing it is too late. There is a sudden pounding on his closet door…

Johnny, I want my liver back… I’m inside your bedroom…

Johnny holds his breath. The closet door creaks open… and then…

AHHH! (the narrator screams)

Context:

“I grew up going to a summer camp near Lassen National Park and the camp led day trips through a bunch of subway tunnels. The tunnels were dark and cold and eventually led to a larger opening, where all the campers would gather in a circle and turn off their flashlights while the counselors told a ghost story. It was tradition to tell this story and the younger campers would always get scared, but it became a part of the camp’s culture. The story didn’t have an exact narrative ending, but it ended with the counselors suddenly turning on their flashlights and jumping at the campers while their screams echoed through the subway caves.”

Analysis:

This story has a pretty clear message to the listeners, who are primarily children: that dishonesty will only get you in more trouble and to follow directions. If Johnny had listened to his mother’s directions and spent his five dollars on the liver, nothing bad would have happened. But because he wanted to cover up his mistake of spending the money on a comic book, he ended up getting an old liver from a fresh body in the local graveyard and his actions came back to haunt him.

I also see this experience as a whole as a “rite of passage” for the participants in the summer camp described by the informant. Young listeners who are hearing the story for the first time will be hanging onto every word and will therefore receive the most shock at the end, when the counselors scare the campers. In contrast, campers who have heard the story before will know what to expect and may even join in on scaring the younger campers. The shared experience of anticipation, fright, and eventual laughter likely creates a sense of bonding/community within the group of listeners.

“The Yellow Ribbon”

Genre: Folk Narrative – Ghost Story

Text:

A man named Johnny was going out for coffee one day when he saw the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He introduced himself to the woman, whose name was Jane, and the two of them began to fall in love. Everything about Jane was perfect, but there was one thing that confused Johnny: every single day, Jane wore a yellow ribbon around her neck.

“Do you ever take it off?” Johnny finally asked her after a month of dating. Jane told him that she never takes it off, even to sleep, and that he should never untie it. But even though Johnny pushed and pushed, she would never tell him why.

“One day, I’ll tell you,” Jane would always say whenever he asked.

The years went by and Johnny and Jane fell deeper in love and eventually, Johnny proposed to her. Yet every day, Jane still wore the same yellow ribbon around her neck.

The night before their wedding, Johnny finally had enough. He decided he absolutely needed to see what was under that ribbon, that he couldn’t wait a single day longer.

That night, Johnny waited for Jane to fall asleep. When he was certain she was sound asleep, he reached over to her neck and gently tugged on the end of the ribbon to untie it…

But when Johnny pulled the ribbon undone, he realized why exactly Jane had worn it every single day: because without the ribbon to hold it in place, her head rolled right off her neck and onto the floor, where Jane’s eyes slowly opened.

“Oh Johnny,” she said, even though her severed head was now a few feet away from her body. “I told you not to untie the ribbon.”

Context:

“I first heard this story from my older brother when I was growing up, but I heard it a few times throughout my childhood at places like childcare centers and in elementary school. I think it’s a pretty common ghost story among kids. I always thought it was creepy to think about a woman’s head being held onto her body by only a ribbon, and for a while, I was scared of anyone I saw wearing a ribbon or a thick choker around their neck.”

Analysis:

The theme of this story seems to be trust within a relationship: Jane withheld a secret from Johnny – the only apparent “fault” about her. But Johnny could not trust her enough to live without knowing what the secret was, and it was his scheming/distrustful nature that led to him trying to discover the answer on his own and accidentally revealing that Jane’s neck was severed. The implication of this happening the night before their wedding suggests that a lack of trust within a couple is potentially ruinous to a marriage. However, another possible interpretation is to take the opposite stance: that it is withholding secrets from one’s partner that destroys a marriage, and that the skeletons of one’s past will always end up being revealed.