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Author
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Comment
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(4/28/05 2:46 pm)
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Homeless children's myths
This article is 8 years old, and so some of the facts have probably changed. However the process it describes of folklore creation among children is fascinating, and the stories are haunting--I would have thought they came from the imagination of Neil Gaiman, not from children as young as 7.
www.miaminewtimes.com/issues/1997-06-05/feature.html
Best,
Alice
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Caerdroia
Registered User
(4/28/05 3:54 pm)
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Re: Homeless children's myths
An SF writer friend of mine was very excited about this article a couple of years ago, and passed it on to me. I find it fascinating, especially the parallels the article draws to African and Latin American folkloric themes.
I wonder if anyone has done any follow-up fieldwork since it was written, and whether the stories have changed or evolved over time.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(4/28/05 4:52 pm)
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Re: Homeless children's myths
You know Michael Chabon in Summerland used the image of La Llorona (Bloody Mary) whose crying and wheedling led people to their death. I assumed that he had gotten her from Latin American folklore, but now I wonder--was the Bloody Mary figure, or a version of La Llorona, picked up by the children from folklore, or is it something they have created on their own? Is there a La Llorona in Latin American folklore?
Best,
Alice
P.S. I too wonder if there have been any follow up studies--they would be interesting.
Edited by: AliceCEB at: 4/28/05 4:53 pm
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Caerdroia
Registered User
(4/28/05 6:25 pm)
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Re: Homeless children's myths
There is a multimedia site dedicated to the story of La Llorona
( www.lallorona.com ).
From what I've been able to tell, the tragedy of La Llorona is quite an old story, possibly based on an actual historical figure. She also tends to turn up as a monster figure in "Don't Go Near the Water"-type cautionary nursery tales.
However, the story on the La Llorona site contains a lot more details about the character than other sources, and I'm not clear on how many of these are fictional expansions on the original story.
Yemaya/Yemaja is an real goddess in Yoruba mythology, but I find her connection to the Blue Lady much weaker than the parallel between La Llorona and the children's Crying Woman, especially since the article says that The Blue Lady is not typically depicted as an African woman.
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darklingthrush
Registered User
(4/28/05 8:43 pm)
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Re: Homeless children's myths
Fascinating story. Actually it gave me shivers. So much hopelessness exists even in their stories its hard to imagine.
Strangely enough, I'm 26 and definately remember kids at school talking about Bloody Mary. I never really knew too much about her except that somehow she was related to mirrors and some of the girls at sleepovers would tease about calling her up through it. Just the name always frightened me a great deal.
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(4/28/05 8:51 pm)
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Re: Homeless children's myths
Melanie Kimball has an article on orphan characters in folktales and their connections to children's literature. I thought of it as I was reading this shiver-worthy story.
Kimball,
Melanie. "From Folktales to Fiction: Orphan Characters in Children's
Literature." Library Trends. 47.3 (1999): 341-604.
Best,
Erica
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Jess
Unregistered User
(4/29/05 11:49 am)
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Pop-culture influence?
This story is amazing, but I kept seeing scenes from the 198? film "Ghostbusters" while I read it. I wonder if that movie had an influence on this tale and/or the other way around.
From reading this, the story sounds like one that is old and has been changed and adapted to help these kids cope with what must seem like an otherwise hopeless future.
What is so sad to me is the reality of death in these children's lives, not just the death of those they knew but of the possibility of their own deaths from violent people. The idea of attributing violent actions of others to possession of that individual's body by a spirit is both frightening and reassuring I imagine to these kids. It shows just how difficult it must be for the to trust. But, like our protaganists in earlier stories, there is always the hope that either 1) a magical spirit will come to their aid; or 2) their own goodness (beauty?) will prevent harm from coming to them or enable them to fight evil. Fascinating, and tragic.
Jess
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aka
Greensleeves
Registered User
(4/29/05 1:19 pm)
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Re: Pop-culture influence?
What struck me (other than how heartbreaking it all is) was these stories' similarity to the in-between world in Pullman's THE SUBTLE KNIFE--the angels and spirits who attack children, a city empty of adults, the cosmic battle between God and demons.... It would be interesting to know if and how these tales crept across the Atlantic....
(And I'm part of the "Bloody Mary in the Mirror" generation, but FWIW, among my peers she was somehow related to Henry V and Anne Boleyn....)
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(4/29/05 1:24 pm)
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Re: Pop-culture influence?
Mine too! But I don't know if that was because that's how my older cousin passed the story on to me, or if it was because I already knew that Mary Tudor was known as Bloody Mary.
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kristiw
Unregistered User
(4/29/05 4:52 pm)
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Bloody Mary
I've been fascinated with the Bloody Mary ritual ever since I realized it was not just confined to my elementary school-- I told the story to a group of friends in the context of "weren't-we-weird-kids" and was astonished that it was apparently a national phenomenon. I know a lot of interesting parallels have been drawn regarding brink-of-adolescence girls, blood, and mirrors...
I don't think it's a stretch to consider divinations gone awry: girls have traditionally used reflections to see their future husbands, suppose what you called up instead were some vision of your future self? Bloody Mary's resonance with the Weeping Woman, Lamia and Lilith (thwarted and therefore destructive mother figures) might suggest pre-menstrual fears of unfulfilled (/childless...) adulthood. Every month you'd be reminded that you could (and therefore should?) have children, and weren't.
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