Tale Motifs - E. The Dead
Ghost Stories!!!
but first, the latest Elvis sighting,
lore about dying and death. Later, the supernatural.
When we are studying folklore, it's fun to realize that folk
material is being created every day. Bullfinche's Mythology has a long section
defining "folk lore" - and part of this is a teasing apart of who
"folk" are, that might be creating this "lore." Everyone, it
must be stressed has some "folk" in him-or-her-self, but most of us disregard
this aspect in civilized life, it seems. Bullfinch believes that folk is to be
contrasted with "learned" or educated sectors of society, and that societies
that have less technology, less education, and less contact with the wider world, produce
the purest "folk" artifacts. But I am not so sure. The contemporary
world gives us hundreds of evolving stories that are pure folk, by all definitions.
In the category of The Dead, we are extremely active.
First, there is the contingent who insists that currently alive people are
actually dead. From the Tom Petty is Dead website.
Caption: The Official Tom Petty is Dead
announcement
and the response: the
The First, Official, and Only
Tom Petty is
NOT DEAD! page
Caption: The alive Tom Petty
And then there are all the faithful who believe their heroes and
heroines are still alive - Amelia Earhart, and Elvis, to name two. Witness the Elvis
sightings.
Captions: Many reincarnations of Elvis
This one is from Finland - September 23, 2000.
Name: marko sallinen //
When: 09.23.2000
Circumstance: elvis gave me my birthday present in 09.23.2000 suddenly to
landing from u.f.o on my backyard!!!someone game out from spac e-ship..when i realised who that black side burn 120kg weightning man
was: i was
in shock!! First thing what elvis told me was to tell everyone here in earth that
is he lives on andromeda=B4s = galacs and people should not to
worried about him anymore: where he is living? is he dead or somethin= g? (I
said why you don=B4t do it yourself):he said becouse it=B4s left to be your
job!! I also video = taped happening!! But some small smoking fat ass came
behind the elvis and sayed: gimme that tape so= n or you gonna get in trouble!! so i gave tape him becouse behind him standed 12-mafia men looking
aliens = with laser guns and they were wearing FDA=B4s shirts!!!He said that
i have a new band with jimi and= john (since 1980 he added i n memphis
accent style) and they only play on andromedan=B4s "people".After= that elvis
started to spea k with that little fat ass who take away my tape i don=B4t
know what they = were speaking but it sound ed like a contract thing. Elvis
and his andromedan=B4s mafia started to wa= lk in the space-ship and elvis
asked me to join with them? I said yeah and so i was spending hole da= y with
elvis and others.. . he took me double speed of light flying ship on their band
rehearasel-ho= use in andromeda and afte r one minute jimi and john suddenly
game around and elvis asked; can i pla= y something with them? I said yeah
again and so we were playing oldies and goldies melodies from 50=
`s,60`s70`s and 80`s i re corded that on my sony mini disk!!!! unfortunetly i
forgot my sony mini disk there!!! Jam went well and jimi was at his best with
his flying-v guitar and bank o= f marshalls(about 2000 of marshals turned as
loud as could be possible john was so good in melodie= s and harmonys....elvis s ang his 70=B4s style loud and voice so full that it sounded
like symphony = orcestra!!!!and i was playi ng guitar(what was left there from
danny gatton=B4s wisit on last day... y= eah he lives there too..)i asked have
they all covered their death=B4s they all smiled and sayed: dea= th what=B4s
that!!!!!So we ja mmed about 12 hours and jimi got everything on tape! Then
they played their new songs and it was strange experience:Universe dr=
opped.. think about that! ! Elvis drove me back to the earth with his private
space ship i asked to = elvis that how is that bo ssible that this space ship flyes
2-times faster than light that=B4s not in possible, speed of light i= s highest
known speed. elvis said: this is an example;when you are flying speed of light
and you = are inside of space-ship throw a baseball forwards of you as hard as
you can... and there your base= ball flyes faster than li ght inside of that
space-ship to you understand?? i said wow.. There must = be faster than
speed of l ight flying space-ships becouse of what you said and where i=B4m
sitting n= ow.Elvis left me standing o n my backyard where this adventure
starded he waved his hand to say goodbye and fly away!!The king has left the
earth!!!
for whatever it's worth!
Aging and Death among the Living.
D.L.
Ashliman (his pages are linked from your Resources site) tells us this about old folks
and folklore.
Aging: realism and resignation expressed in
proverbs: For most pre-industrial cultures, life's last chapter has been a bitter one. Surviving
folklore reflects widespread resignation as to the inevitability of impoverishment, sexual
impotence, failing health and vitality, and the loss of family and community status. No
one expected the impossible. Such euphemisms as "golden years" and "senior
citizens" did not exist.
You cannot teach an old dog new tricks.
There is no fool like an old fool.
An old man who takes a young wife invites Death to the wedding.
Nothing good will come from an old man who still wants to dance.
For an old man to marry is like wanting to harvest in the wintertime.
Old people can dye their hair, but they can't change their backs.
Age is poverty.
Age is a troublesome guest.
Age is a sickness from which everyone must die.
Youth rises, age falls.
A young wife is an old man's dispatch horse to the grave.
A young woman with an old husband is a wife by day and a widow by night.
A woman's beauty, an echo in the forest, and a rainbow all quickly disappear.
When the old cow dances, her claws rattle.
When the wolf grows old, the crows ride him.
Caption: Son beating his father to death in
bed.
Distrust of old people in folklore
In spite of the numerous tales and proverbs celebrating the wisdom
of old people and promoting their care, folklore is replete with reflections of a basic
distrust of age. Various demonic personages, notably changelings and the devil himself,
can be rendered powerless by tricking them into revealing their age. More significantly,
in pre-industrial Europe superstitions abound that cast suspicion at old people,
especially women. Proverbs and popular superstitions state the claim succinctly:
If the devil can't come himself, he sends an old woman.
It is not good if one goes out in the morning and encounters an old woman.
He who walks between two old women early in the morning shall have only bad luck the rest
of the day.
To meet old women first thing in the morning means bad luck; young people, good luck.
Many men would rather let themselves be beaten to death, than to pass between two old
women.
A person on his way to an important undertaking will have bad luck if he encounters an old
woman. Encountering a
young girl will bring him good luck.
and these kinds of superstitions show up in
folk stories frequently (witches are usually old, but regualar old women come in for a
beating, too).
An old woman, promised a pair of shoes by the devil if she could bring
discord to a happily married couple, told
the wife that she could increase her husband's love by cutting a few hairs from his chin.
She then told the husband
that his wife was plotting to cut his throat while he slept. The man pretended to sleep.
Seeing his wife silently
approaching with a razor, he struck her dead with a stick.
Source: Retold from "An Old Woman Sows Discord," Ranke, Folktales of Germany,
no. 66. Type 1353.
Source: Wander, Deutsches Sprichwörter-Lexikon, vol. 1, cols. 55, 58-60; Simrock, Die
deutschen
Sprichwörter, pp. 281, 614; Jente, Proverbia Communia, nos. 28, 102."
The Dying
Folklore of many cultures also records the effort to speed death
through subtle kinds of euthanasia. Suicide, self-scrifice in battle, abandonment,
exile, and execution are some of the accepted ways of death in various cultures. In
South America, there are tribes where the job of the Witch Doctor is to strangle a dying
individual to prevent his ghost from hanging around. In Europe, ancients would open
the windows or remove roof tiles, letting the cold air in, and inviting the ghost to
depart.
Also, war, destruction, or famine would often prompt a culture
to remove the members who were no longer useful. An Icelandic saga tells of a famine
time when
(from Ashliman)
"Men ate
ravens and foxes, and many loathsome thinges were eaten which should not be eaten, and
some men had the old and helpless killed and thrown over the cliffs."
One of the Grimms' German Legends (no. 454) tells
how, in the eighth century, a community fleeing from enemy soldiers buried one of their
old women alive to keep her from being taken captive. They carried out the fateful task
while chanting "Creep under, creep under, the world is too sorrowful for you; you can
no longer follow the commotion." In their commentary to this legend, the Grimms
document two additional instances of ritualistic killing of the aged. In each of the
Grimms' three examples the geronticide was accompanied by a ritualistic chant, which
suggests that these had, to at least some extent, not only legitimized, but also
formalized the killing of their aged.
During heathen times the Sorbian Wends of Lausitz
practiced the shameful and gruesome custom of ridding
themselves of their old people who were no longer able to contribute. When , a father
would be struck dead by his
own son A son would strike his own father dead when he became old and incompetent, or he
would throw him
into water, or he would push him over a high cliff. Indeed, there are many examples of
this, even after the advent
of Christianity. For example:
Herr Levin von Schulenburg, a high official in Altmark, was traveling among the Wends in
about 1580 when he
saw an old man being led away by several people. "Where are you going with the old
man?" he asked, and
received the answer, "To God!" They were going to sacrifice him to God, because
he was no longer able to earn
his own sustenance. When the official grasped what was happening, he forced them to turn
the old man over to
him. He took him home with him and hired him as a gatekeeper, a position that he held for
twenty additional years.
"One Winter there was an old woman
who was left behind ... with only a few insects to eat."
beginning of an old Eskimo story.
Fear of old age and the aged also crops up in folktales about
sacrifice of the old, especially the grandmother.
An example of a type 1535 tale containing the
episode of the intentionally sacrificed old mother
or grandmother (here called a "great grandmother," presumably to emphasize her
advanced age, and hence
her dispensability): "Der Schelm von Mols" ("The Trickster from Mols"
-- Denmark), Bødker, Dänische
Volksmärchen, no. 23. In some tales of this type the grandmother's murder is repressed.
The storyteller
lets her die of natural causes or accidentally, but the hero still uses her corpse to
extort money from others.
Examples: "Little Claus and Big Claus," Andersen, Complete Fairy Tales and
Stories, no. 2; "Master Sly"
(Luxemburg), Bødker, Hole, and D'Aronco, European Folk Tales , pp. 99-102. In still other
versions, the
trickster hero uses his wife in a similar fashion. For example, in "The Peasant
Pewit," (Ranke, Folktales of
Germany, no. 51) the little peasant, threatened by enemies, exchanges clothing with his
wife, thus tricking
them into killing her instead of him.
Disposing of the corpse: a legend
that is still alive
this, also from the pages of D.L.
Ashliman
These stories not only turn the exploitation of the old into a joke, they also make light
of problems encountered by the survivors in disposing of the corpse. These tales thus
reflect the attitude that an old person can, at the same time, be both an expendable
resource and a troublesome burden. This latter feature has given rise to an entire family
of tales generically called "Disposing of the Corpse" (type 1536). An Icelandic
version entitled "The Woman that Was Killed Four Times" is particularly
revealing. It relates how a woman killed her old mother-in-law (who lived with her and her
husband) and then set the body in a kneeling position over her husband's treasure chest.
The husband thinks the "intruder" is a burglar and stabs her. Recognizing the
corpse as his own mother, he enlists his wife's help to dispose of the body. The younger
woman twice again sets up similar tricks. Thus, she can rid herself of her aging
mother-in-law only after she has had her "killed" four times.
Source: "Die viermal getötete Frau," Schier, Märchen aus Island, no.
43."
The image of the aging parent as a troublesome burden is only thinly veiled behind the
curtain of slapstick in these tales. And indeed, similar motifs are still extant in the
active folklore of the twentieth century. "Disposing of Grandmother's Corpse" is
still a popular theme in European and American folktales.
I might add here that it is a folk
element that slips into literature, as well. In Steinbeck's Grapes of
Wrath, the
grandmother's corpse causes a comic-tragic incident as the Joads are crossing the border
into California.
Note: Jan Harold Brunvand gives numerous examples, with interpretations, of this and
related urban legends
in The Vanishing Hitchhiker, ch. 5. See also Alan Dundes, "On the Psychology of
Legend," in American
Folk Legend; A Symposium, Wayland D. Hand, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1971), pp.
33-36. The legend was built into the popular film National Lampoon's Vacation starring
Chevy Chase.
A man in the prime of life abused his aging
father; he would strike him and even drag him out of the house by his
hair. When he too became old his son treated him the same way. One day the son dragged him
out the door and
onto the street. "You go too far!" cried the old man. "I never dragged my
old father beyond the gate."
Source: Retold from "Turn About Is Fair Play" (type 980C, Pourrat, Treasury
of French Tales, p. 163).
The average collection of 200 traditional nursery rhymes
contains approximately 100 rhymes which personify all that is glorious and ideal for the
child. Unfortunately, the remaining 100 rhymes harbor unsavory elements. The incidents
listed below occur in the average collection and may be accepted as a reasonably
conservative estimate based on a general survey of this type of literature.
8 allusions to murder (unclassified),
2 cases of choking to death,
1 case of cutting a human being in half,
1 case of decapitation,
1 case of death by squeezing,
1 case of death by shriveling,
1 case of death by starvation,
1 case of boiling to death,
1 case of death by hanging,
1 case of death by drowning,
4 cases of killing domestic animals,
1 case of body snatching,
21 cases of death (unclassified),
7 cases relating to the severing of limbs,
1 case of the desire to have a limb severed,
2 cases of self-inflicted injury,
4 cases relating to the breaking of limbs,
1 allusion to a bleeding heart,
1 case of devouring human flesh,
5 threats of death,
1 case of kidnapping,
12 cases of torment and cruelty to human beings and animals,
8 cases of whipping and lashing,
3 allusions to blood,
14 cases of stealing and general dishonesty,
15 allusions to maimed human beings and animals,
1 allusion to undertakers,
2 allusions to graves,
23 cases of physical violence (unclassified),
1 case of lunacy,
16 allusions to misery and sorrow,
1 case of drunkenness,
4 cases of cursing,
1 allusion to marriage as a form of death,
1 case of scorning the blind,
1 case of scorning prayer,
9 cases of children being lost or abandoned,
2 cases of house burning,
9 allusions to poverty and want,
5 allusions to quarreling,
2 cases of unlawful imprisonment,
2 cases of racial discrimination.
Expressions of fear, weeping, moans of anguish, biting, pain and evidence of
supreme selfishness may be found in almost
every other page.
Source: As quoted by Baring-Gould, The Annotated Mother Goose, pp. 20-21.
I am, of course, deeply indebted
to Ashliman for the information in this lecture.
and on to Ghosts!!
Continue with Lecture V.
