Category: Folklore

Colonial and native Tall Tales

Extraordinary natural occurrences and appearances were traditionally explained in myths, legends or so called Tall Tales. They fall in the larger genre of folklore and different from myths or legends they are relatively young or have known or contemporary authorship. An example from European Antiquity would be the “Alexander Romances“, fictitious accounts of the life of Alexander the Great (356 – 323 BCE) that exist in over 100 known versions and several languages. In the USA a popular figure of Tall Tales is the giant Paul Bunyan. Tales about Paul Bunyan first appeared in the mid 19. Century and include among others explanations for the existence of the Grand Canyon and Minnesota’s Thousand Lakes.

In a facebook post I recently came across this humorous first nation version of a Paul Bunyan tales. It’s a great example how natural science, political satire and ancient mythology intersect. And it also shows how closely connected and intertwined the folklore of US-American white settlers and the folklore of first nations in the Americas is.

Believe it or not, us Ojibwe also have a story about Paul Bunyan. He came to the area known as Red Lake and tried his de-forestation BS, but Nanaboozhoo – The Greatest Ojibwe who ever lived – obviously wasn’t having none of that. They got into a fight that lasted 3 days, and finally our hero picked up a giant walleye and slapped the outlander silly with it. Paul got knocked on his ass in a mud puddle, so hard it left an imprint of his buttcheeks there in the wet ground…that’s why the lake is shaped the way it is and why we were able to keep our forest.
You’ll never hear this story in a book, but that’s basically how I heard it from my father when I was young – after coming home from kindergarten in Bemidj (Paul’s favorite town, mwahaha!) and talking about him.
That’s the story behind the Paul/Babe & Nanaboozhoo statues in that town. This used to be a sign at the rez line, I remember the chimooks didn’t like it and kept cutting it down. But the story lives on, and now you know.

The Bride and the Sink Hole

The city of Alexandria once had an extensive network of water cisterns below ground that distributed drinking water from a channel connecting the river Nile south-east of the city with the city’s harbor in the west. This was vital for the survival of the population as the Nile flood brought sweet water to the city only once in the summer months. The water needed to be stored for the remaining year and the deep cisterns served that purpose. As the „city of layers“, as it is often referred to, grew and layers upon layers of streets and buildings were added, the cisterns underground would collapse from time to time, creating sink holes and cracks in the streets. In some areas, sea water dissipates into the ground, further enhancing the erosion of the structure.

The artist Islam Shabana told me the following story: In 1973 a young, newly wed woman fell into a sink hole that suddenly opened up under her. When people came to her rescue she disappeared completely into the abyss. Rescue teams climbed after her but never found the body.

The disappearance of a young woman in broad daylight and right before the eyes of the people is of course the stuff for an enduring urban legend. One popular story speculates that she was abducted by a love-struck Jinn who was enraged by her marriage to another man.

The woman is simply referred to by Alexandrians as „The Bride“. Alexandria itself is called „The Bride of the Mediterranean“ and one of Alexandria’s emblematic figures is the mermaid, which in Arab means „Bride of the Sea“. And what makes this story for Alexandrians even more meaningful is, that in the same street the Bride disappeared another body disappeared too: the body of the city’s founder Alexander the Great. As was confirmed to me by Islam Shabana, Al Naby Danyal (Prophet Daniel Street) is the most probable location of the shrine that held the emperor’s body, referred to as Soma, meaning simply „The Body“. The building and Alexander’s remains are lost and it is unclear what happened to them. Historian Islam Issa writes, that most probably it was situated on the corner of Al Naby Danyal and Fuad Street and might still be there, only underground.

Today even more than in the 1970s, sink holes are appearing everywhere in the city, especially in the winter months. The ground below Alexandria is hollowed like a Swiss cheese, as historian Kathrin Machinek explained to me. The cisterns have not been in use for decades and there are so many, that it is impossible to say, where and when the next one will collapse. The sea level rise in the Mediterranean and land subsidence due to the incessant building activity above ground makes matters worse.

Prophet Daniel Street, freshly paved, on the corner of Fuad Street in April 2024.

Thanks to Islam Shabana for the lead!

Serempak of the Bajau People

This is the traditional festive head gear worn by Bajau women. The Bajau, a formerly nomadic people now mostly home to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, live by and from the sea and have recently gained recognition for a genetic trait that allows them to dive deeper and for longer time stretches than any other ethnic group. They are often referred to as Sea People and this traditional head gear seems to symbolize this. I could not find any interpretation of the shape, but they appear to me like ships or tail fins of sea mammals or mermaids – or all three.

The woman in the fur coat who brought the flood

Australian Geographer Patrick Nunn opens a book of his with the following story told by a Chief of the Haida people of Haida Gwaii (formerly Queen Charlotte Islands).

“Young recalled, his people lived in northwest Haida Gwaii in a large village across from Frederick Island. One day, a group of children playing on the beach noticed a stranger some distance away, wearing a fur cape of a kind never before seen in Haida lands. Running up to her, one cheeky boy lifted the cape to expose the stranger’s back, the sight of which made the children laugh and jeer.

After the adults called their children away, the woman went to sit alone on the sand near the ocean’s edge. The water rose to her feet, so she got up and moved a little distance up the beach. The water again reached her feet and so it went on until the ocean had climbed higher than ever before. It became clear to the Haida that their homes would shortly be flooded, so in panic they tied logs together to make rafts and, taking to the ocean, were able to save themselves.

Young explained that because these crude rafts could not be steered, each drifted to a different place, a story that could be a distant memory of the time — thousands of years ago — when the first Haida peoples are known to have been dispersed by the rising of the ocean level here.”

Patrick Nunn goes on to conclude: “Young’s story can be read as myth, especially the detail about the stranger and the unfamiliar fur cape she wore. […] But ist is also science, a distant echo of ancient people’s explanations of what happenend to them […] 12.700 years ago.”

Patrick Nunn stresses the point that stories llike these must have been passed on orally for around 500 generations, an astonishing cultural achievement that defys the notion of oral culture as short-lived or deficiant. See also this article by Nunn for aeon.co magazine here.

A Chinese Flood and Creation Myth

(This text is from the site by the University of Pittsburg.)

“The Miao people in Southern China have no written records, but they have many legends in verse, which they learn to repeat and sing. The Hei Miao (or Black Miao, so called from their dark chocolate-colored clothes) treasure poetical legends of the creation and of a deluge. These are composed in lines of five syllables, in stanzas of unequal length, one interrogative and one responsive. They are sung or recited by two persons or two groups at feasts and festivals, often by a group of youths and a group of maidens. The legend of the creation commences:

Who made heaven and earth?
Who made insects?
Who made men?
Made male and made female?
I who speak don’t know.

Heavenly King made heaven and earth,
Ziene made insects,
Ziene made men and demons,
Made male and made female.
How is it you don’t know?

How made heaven and earth?
How made insects?
How made men and demons?
Made male and made female?
I who speak don’t know.

Heavenly King was intelligent,
Spat a lot of spittle into his hand,
Clapped his hands with a noise,
Produced heaven and earth,
Tall grass made insects,
Stories made men and demons,
Made men and demons,
Made male and made female.
How is it you don’t know?

The legend proceeds to state how and by whom the heavens were propped up and how the sun was made and fixed in its place.

The legend of the flood tells of a great deluge. It commences:

Who came to the bad disposition,
To send fire and burn the hill?
Who came to the bad disposition,
To send water and destroy the earth?
I who sing don’t know.

Zie did. Zie was of bad disposition,
Zie sent fire and burned the hill;
Thunder did. Thunder was of bad disposition,
Thunder sent water and destroyed the earth.
Why don’t you know?

In this story of the flood only two persons were saved in a large bottle gourd used as a boat, and these were A-Zie and his sister. After the flood the brother wished his sister to become his wife, but she objected to this as not being proper. At length she proposed that one should take the upper and one the lower millstone, and going to opposite hills should set the stones rolling to the valley between. If these should be found in the valley properly adjusted one above the other, she would be his wife, but not if they came to rest apart.

The young man, considering it unlikely that two stones thus rolled down from opposite hills would be found in the valley, one upon another, while pretending to accept the test suggested, secretly placed two other stones in the valley, one upon the other. The stones rolled from the hills were lost in the tall wild grass, and on descending into the valley, A-Zie called his sister to come and see the stones he had placed.

She, however, was not satisfied, and suggested as another test that each should take a knife from a double sheath and, going again to the opposite hilltops, hurl them into the valley below. If both these knives were found in the sheath in the valley, she would marry him, but if the knives were found apart, they would live apart.

Again the brother surreptitiously placed two knives in the sheath, and, the experiment ending as A-Zie wished, his sister became his wife. They had one child, a misshapen thing without arms or legs, which A-Zie in great anger killed and cut to pieces. He threw the pieces all over the hill, and next morning, on awakening, he found these pieces transformed into men and women. Thus the earth was re-peopled.

  • Source: E. T. C. Werner, Myths and Legends of China (London: George G. Harrap and Company, 1922), pp. 406-408.
  • Edited by D. L. Ashliman. © 2002-2003.

Thunderbird and Whale

“Throughout Cascadia (southern Canadian and northern US-American west coast), earth shaking and/or tsunamilike effects are frequently described in stories about the acts and personalities of supernatural beings, often in the guise of animals. Many stories from western Vancouver Island and northern Washington tell of a struggle between Thunderbird and Whale, and throughout Cascadia stories about these figures frequently include explicit mention or visual imagery suggesting shaking and/or tsunamilike effects.

Alert Bay; a Thunderbird and Whale painted on the front of the house of Kwakwaka’ wakw Chief Tlah go glas (Malin 1999). Photo taken by Richard Maynard, 1873, print available from Vancouver Museum, 23.

Thunderbird and Whale are beings of supernatural size and power. A story from Vancouver Island says that all creation rests on the back of a mammoth whale, and that Thunderbird causes thunder by moving even a feather and carries a large lake on his back from which water pours in thunderstorms.

Shaking and ocean surges can be inferred from the story of Thunderbird driving his talons deeply into Whale’s back, and Whale diving and dragging the struggling Thunderbird to the bottom of the ocean (other versions have Thunderbird conquering Whale). Shaking is implied by imagery: Thunderbird lifts the massive Whale into the air and drops him on the land surface.

The struggle between Thunderbird and Whale is unique to the Cascadia coast and appears in stories from Vancouver Island to northern Oregon. From central Oregon south, thunder or whale figures appear individually in stories describing earthquake or tsunami themes. The central figures are variously identified as Thunder, Thunderbird, or bird and Whale, fish, or sea monster. In northern California, one tribe has an “Earthquake” figure with “Thunder” as his companion. Stories from Puget Sound and eastern Washington also use these motifs in conjunction with descriptions of earthquake effects.

Thunderbird and Whale stories are part of a systematic oral tradition that used symbolism and mnemonic keys to condense and present information in a format that could be remembered and retold for generations.”

excerpt from Ruth S. Ludwin et al.: “Dating the 1700 Cascadia Earthquake: Great Coastal Earthquakes in Native Stories”

full text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252069651_Dating_the_1700_Cascadia_Earthquake_Great_Coastal_Earthquakes_in_Native_Stories

The Sea Wall in the shape of a Bird

Image may contain Outdoors Nature Land Shoreline Water Ocean Sea Scenery Landscape Coast and Aerial View

While Jakarta has serious evacuation plans, there are apparently also plans to build a new and unique sea wall. Quote from an article from 2016:
“The National Capital Integrated Coastal Development consortium will build a new set of barrier islands and a sea wall that will guard the city from waves and storm surges. The extensive project will take the shape of the Garuda, a mythical bird and symbol of Indonesia. While construction is already under way (the first pile was planted in October 2014), KuiperCompagnons, the Dutch firm behind much of the design, estimates that the project will take 30 to 40 years to complete.”

Read the full article here.
And more info here and here:

And this is Garuda:

Quote from wikipedia:
“Garuda is described as the king of the birds and a  kite-like figure. He is shown either in a zoomorphic form (a giant bird with partially open wings) or an anthropomorphic form (a man with wings and some ornithic features). Garuda is generally portrayed as a protector with the power to swiftly travel anywhere, ever vigilant and an enemy of every serpent. Garuda is a part of state insignia of India, Indonesia and Thailand. The Indonesian official coat of arms is centered on the Garuda and the national emblem of Indonesia is called Garuda Pancasila.”

Thanks to Johanna Fischer for the lead!

Manimekhala: The Goddess of the Sea

Manimekhala is a budddhist goddess regarded in Southeast Asia as guardian of the Seas.

Nyai Roro Kidul: The Queen of the Southern Seas

The legends around the mermaid goddess Kidul – also Ratu Kidul – are mostly linked to the 16th century Javanese Mataram Sultanate. However, anthropological studies suggest that the myth of the Queen of Java’s Southern Seas probably originated from older prehistoric animistic beliefs in the pre-Hindu-Buddhist female deity of the southern ocean. The fierce waves of the Indian Ocean on southern Java’s coasts, its storms and sometimes tsunamis, probably had raised in the locals awe and fear of natural power, and locals attributed it to the spiritual realm of deities and demons that inhabit the southern seas ruled by their queen, a female deity, later identified as “Queen Kidul”. (from wikipedia)

Looming and Silent Cities

There is an optical phenomenon called looming in which objects at sea appear to be floating in the air above water level. In Spring 2021 such an image photographed went viral online.

(click n the image for article.)

Apparently this phenomenon was well known throughout history among coastal communities as it appears as a sign for bad luck in legends and myths. Along the German North Sea coast it is a common superstition that loomings announce severe floods and houses or cities that are seen that way will be submerged and lost. (see the post on vineta) It’s interesting to note that in the superstition the city is first elevated above and then submerged under the sea level.

This image is also a case of looming:

It shows lake Michigan apparently with the skyline of Chicago in the distance. “Due to the curvature of the earth, the city isn’t visible over the lake from here: the image is a refraction of the real skyline projected above the horizon. Like the boat in David Morris’s image, this is an example of ‘looming.” (National Geographic).

Similar illusions of floating cities also appear on land, particularly in arctic regions due to the extreme temperatures. During the gold rush in the 19. Century, reports of mysterious cityscapes became very popular. agical cities foating Cities floating above ground are also a popular topic in science fiction literature and film. There are numerous reports of travelers seeing city skylines appear out of the fog or above the ground, ofter referred to as “Silent Cities”.

Read the full article here.