M*A*S*H Folklore

Gotta love folklore.  Gotta love popular culture.  Folklore about popular culture - double the love!

Apparently there is a story circulating the interwebs about the episode of the television series MASH in which the news of the character Col. Blake's death is announced.   It seems that the writers waited to make the announcement at the last minute - during filming - so as to get the best surprise reaction from the actors.    This is great for so many reasons.  The first thing that amazes me is that there is an item of folklore circulating about an episode that initially aired over thirty years ago!   Second thing that I love is that no one should really care about this - but we do!  

Anyway, great article about this over at Snopes.

STORYTRON

I am a big fan of the work of Gary Alan Fine.  Sometimes I wondered if the guy was following my life; two of his studies involved cultural groups to which I have belonged: high school debaters and kitchen workers.   His study that was most influential on me was also one that studied a group to which I once belonged - in his "Shared Fantasy" he wrote about the nerdiest of nerdy groups, D&D players.  What interested me most about Fine's work was his assertion that gaming is essentially creating a collaborative narrative.   And it is this narrative that interests the little folklorist in me.   

This brings me to a recent post from the seminal blog "Boing Boing" about the launch of a new narrative-creating game called "Storytron."  The initial story is about geopolitics and treaty-making, which, admittedly, does not interest me much.   However, the concept of gaming as storytelling does enough that I believe it is worth a looksee.

Archie Green Obituary

Archie Green - arguably America's premiere public folklorist - has recently passed.    Archie Green was fundamental in the establishment of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.   

His obituary from the New York Times can be found here.

My favorite quote from the article, from Roger Abrahams, "He looked like a hobo, and carried everything around in a paper bag.   He would just sit in the corridors of Congress and wait until people let him in to talk."

Penis Theft in Africa

The ever-entertaining Xeni over at Boingboing posted about the trend of penis- (and vagina-) theft hysteria in West Africa.   

Jeez, where do I start with this one.  So -- there is an odd cultural phenomenon in West Africa involving panic over the belief that one's genitals have been "stolen" through witchery.  Usually it's reported as "penis theft,"  but there's a female version too - the belief that witches can also make "normal" adult female genitals shrivel up and dry "like old lady parts."

The complete post can be found here.

My favorite quote: "Well, it was a lot larger before."

March Folklore Books, Part the Third

These books are coming out the last two weeks in March.  Keep your eyes open for them, and if there are any upcoming books you would like me to spotlight, let me know!

• Oral and Written Expressions of African Culture - Toyin Falola and Fallou Ngom.  An interdisciplinary anthology with articles about 'vulgar poetry' in South Africa, print media in Nigeria, 'lowbrow' fiction during Apartheid, among others.
• Rights, Promotion and Integration Issues for Minority Languages in Europe - Susana Pertot, Tom Priestly, Colin H. Williams.  Primary focus is on Slovenian in both Italy and Hungary and on Welsh.
• Ambiguous Bodies: Reading the Grotesque in Japanese Setsuwa Tales - Michelle Li.
• Asian American Folktales - Thomas A. Green.  Part of the series 'Stories from the American Mosaic.'
• Culture and Customs of Puerto Rico - Javier A. Galvan.
• Latino American Folktales - Thomas A. Green. Another one from 'Stories from the American Mosaic.'
• They All Want Magic: Curanderas and Folk Healing - Elizabeth de la Portilla.  The author is herself a curendera-in-training.
• Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative - Linda Tate.  A memoir in the series 'Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Appalachia.'
• Focus: Music of Northeast Brazil - Larry Crook.
• Defiant Maids and Stubborn Farmers: Tradition and Invention in Mende Story Performance - Donald J. Cosentino.   "Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture."  Hells, yeah, I want this one!
• Fairy Tales: A New History - Ruth B. Bottigheimer.  From what I gather she argues that the fairytale is a literary genre created for an urban audience and dismisses much of the folkloric influences on the genre.  Should make for an interesting read.
• Whose Culture?:  Promise of Museums and the Debate over Antiquities - ed. by James Cuno.
• Xhosa Oral Poetry: Aspects of a Black South African Tradition (Paperback) - Jeff Opland.  Another one from the 'Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture' series.  I want this one too.  I want anything that says studies in oral culture!
• Anthropology Off the Shelf: Anthropologists on Writing - Alisse Waterston and Maria D. Vesperi (eds).
• Joseph Smith and Herbal Medicine - John Heinerman.
• Rai Mythology: Kiranti Oral Texts - Karen E. Ebert and Martin Gaenzle.
• Nepalese Shaman Oral Texts II: Texts of the Bhuji Valley - Gregory G. Maskarinic.  This and the above title are in the 'Harvard Oriental Series.'
• Marvelous Geometry: Narrative and Metafiction in Modern Fairy Tale - Jessica Tiffin.

Gashnarbit, there are a bunch of good books on this week's list!  

A Story of Machekur

Here's another story taken completely out of context, for our general amusement:

One time the Mice-Girls offered him some fat pudding, made of fish-roe mixed with oil. He ate so much that he could not eat any more, and fell asleep. They took a small bladder and fashioned it to the old man's anus. He awoke and went home, and on account of the quantity of oil he had swallowed, he had diarrhoea. So he would sit down and try to defecate; but when he stood up, no faeces were to be seen on the ground. In the meanwhile, after three or four attempts, he felt something heavy attached to his buttocks. He went to his wife and said "Machekur-woman! I tried to defecate, but it seems in vain, for I saw no faeces on the ground. Meantime I feel as if my intestines had one out my anus." "sit down!" said the woman. But he remained standing. "Sit down!" she again shouted, and he was much frightened, and flopped down upon a bench. The bladder burst, and the faeces flowed around. The end.

Tale was collected by Waldemar Borgoras from Mary Korkin, a Russianized Yukaghir women in Kolyma in 1896.   If you are interested in anus stories, there is another good on in the collection called "Sea-Wanderers."  

Leprechaun Sightings In Alabama

March Book Updates, Week 2

These books of interest to the folklorist are appearing this week.  Are you as excited as I am about this?  

• May Day Festivals in America, 1830 to the Present - Allison Thompson.  Amazon lists this as out-of-print, but is still listed as a new release.  
• Oxford Companion to World Mythology - David Leeming.  Paperback.
• Masculinity and Popular Television - Rebecca Feasey.  This has a kick-ass picture of Jack Bauer on the cover (Jack Bauer jokes are awesome, my favorite: Jack Bauer is Arabic for "Oh Shit!")  And, yes, my definition of folklore is probably broader than yours.
• The Parting of The Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of Exodus - Barbara J. Sivertsen.

March Book Updates, Week 1

These are the books of interest to the folklorist that are being released in the first week of March.  Why, yes, I would love to receive these books.

• Living Memory: The Social Aesthetics of Language in a Northern Italian Town - Jillian Cavanaugh.
• The Chronicle of the Czechs - Cosmas of Prague (trans. by Lisa Wolverton)
• Such Freedom, If Only Musical: Unofficial Soviet Music During the Thaw - Peter J. Schmelz.  This book is about classical music, but should be interesting nonetheless.
• Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey: A Biography - Alberto Manguel.  Paperback.
• Eat Thy Neighbor: A History of Cannibalism - Daniel Diehl and Mark Donnelly.  With all of my posts recently about cannibalism, this should be right up my alley.
• One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record - Candace S. Greene.
• The Trickster Revisited: Deception as a Motif in the Pentateuch - Dean Andrew Nicholas.
• Kiviuq: An Inuit Hero and His Siberian Cousins  - Kira Van Deusen.
• The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in TWentieth-Century Nova Scotia - Ian McKay.

Another Tale About a Cannibal!

From the tale "Story About Cannibals," as told by the Lamut storyteller Irashkan in 1895 in Kolyma, who asserts that "In ancient times he Lamut of all parts of the land ate one another."  He tells the story of a husband who is preparing his wife for what we all know is coming:

And, indeed, in the night in the very act of copulation, the husband felt with his hands the haunches and the belly of the woman, and muttered to himself, "still not enough.  Why do you not eat your fill?  Eat more fat and marrow."  So  the woman understood.

Gives new meaning to liking women with a little more back.