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Comment
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weavergirl
Registered User
(9/8/05 12:48 am)
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La Lorna and Flordia kids folklore
A while ago someone posted a link to an article on Flordia street kids folklore, does someone know where it is? I'm rather interested because I keep hearing people on the board saying that La Lorna(sp?) (pronouced : lore-rei-na) and Bloody Mary are specfic to Flordia street kids folklore. Yet I grew up in San Diego and both are known over there. So I wanted to compare the stories. (Though I've never been quite sure if they are the same person over in San Diego or not).
Thank you.
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Heidi Anne Heiner
ezOP
(9/8/05 1:28 am)
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Re: La Lorna and Flordia kids folklore
Try here (this archived thread from June 2005 includes links to previous threads on the same topic):
Myth Over Miami
Heidi
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weavergirl
Registered User
(9/8/05 4:47 am)
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Re: La Lorna and Flordia kids folklore
Thank you!
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(9/8/05 5:34 am)
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Re: La Lorna and Flordia kids folklore
I missed this last time around... and am absolutely gobsmacked...
Someone mentioned the account linked from here might have been exaggerated - Can anyone shed light on that?
One thing occurred to me - 100% certainty, there are wordprocessors a-rattling as we speak, on airport novels or screenplays out of this... Bearing in mind the kids' fears about sharing their stories with grown-ups or even older siblings, here's a question I thought I knew the answer to: To what extent do people have the right to appropriate other people's stories? - If those people need them for themselves right now?
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megaerairae
Registered User
(9/8/05 8:20 pm)
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Re: La Lorna and Flordia kids folklore
Huh, the La lorna (given your pron. guide) sounds almost like a corruption/variation of La Llorona (pron. Yo-row-na). What does this La Lorna or La lorena do?
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(9/8/05 8:27 pm)
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Re: La Lorna and Flordia kids folklore
Eh, the thing is this. Either these kids are going to die, in which case it doesn't matter to them what we do with their stories, or they're going to grow up, in which case, barring some sort of total amnesia, there are going to be older kids and then adults who know the stories--i.e., those same kids older. (And I'm not being flip because they're street kids. These are the options for all of us.) I don't think there's any hope of keeping folklore secret because of its very nature--it's passed from person to person or it isn't folklore. It seemed to me from reading the article that the issue wasn't that telling adults would remove the magic from the stories--the kids are more than happy to draw pictures of them that adults see. It's more that adults and older kids don't really believe them any more.
In any case, my general answer is that it's okay to do almost anything as long as you do it well, and if you do it badly, it's never okay.
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DividedSelf
Registered User
(9/9/05 5:07 am)
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Re: La Lorna and Flordia kids folklore
Quote:
In any case, my general answer is that it's okay to do almost anything as long as you do it well, and if you do it badly, it's never okay.
No, totally agree with all that in the end... but it just struck me...
I think it's all too easy to see what the balance sheet mentality would do with this material. And this is probably just the kind of revision that would filter down through tv etc. and back to the kids themselves. But I think the point of my question wasn't so much about prohibition, as about danger.
I wondered about these older kids, who've grown out of the belief. Is there some sort of collusion in protecting the myth for the younger ones? Like adults preserving, and protracting Father Christmas stories?
I think the kids are right to be frightened of passing this stuff onto adults. Some adults put on a white beard and hand out presents at Christmas time. There are others who'll just trash any nursery party if there's a pay off.
Subtlety, honesty, emotional power - none of these figure among the narrative demands of the multiplex, and all of them would be required to do this justice, I think.
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chirons daughter
Registered User
(9/13/05 12:07 pm)
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Re: La Lorna and Flordia kids folklore
I have to read this over in more detail. It's gobsmacking, all right.
The Blue Lady reminds me of two images, that don't seem to have anything to do with each other. One of them is the way the Blue Fairy was depicted in the movie AI (just my association, I guess) -- but the other may be stronger. These kids in Miami must have some Cubans among them, who know features of the santeria cult. The Blue Lady may have something to do with Yemaya, the strongest of the female Yoruba orishas (deities):
"Yemaya lives and rules over the seas and lakes. She also rules over maternity in our lives as she is the Mother of All. Her name, a shortened version of Yey Omo Eja means "Mother Whose Children are the Fish" to reflect the fact that her children are so numerous that they are uncountable. As modern sciences has theorizes and ancient cultures have known, life started in the sea. As an embryo we all spend the first moments of our lives swimming in a warm sea of amneotic fluid inside our mother's womb. We must transform and evolve through the form of a fish before becoming a human baby. In this way Yemaya displays herself as truly the mother of all, since she is the seed of all the paths or manifestations. Joined with Yemaya in the Yoruba tradition is Olokun, the source of all riches and unfathomable power. Yemaya dresses herself in seven skirts of blue and white and like the seas and profound lakes she is deep and unknowable, but also caring and nurturing. In Candomble, Santeria and Ifa Yemoja is considered the ultimate matriarch symbol. Yemoja embodies all characteristics of motherhood, caring and love. This maternal source of divine, human, animal, and plant life is most widely symbolized by the ocean. However, in Yoruba land, Yemonja is the deity of the Ogun river, which is the largest river within the territory of the ancient Yoruba. In the new world Yemonja is the deity of the top part of the ocean and has incorporated many of the characteristics of Olukun. In all cases Yemoja represents the birthplace of life on earth."
www.swarthmore.edu/Humani...emaya.html
Take a look at the end of this article too -- Yemaya hates death, knives and violence, and the corners of streets (!). She seeks to protect her children from these things. But when you go swimming you have to remind her not to love you too much and take you down to be with her.
So -- for poorly mothered or motherless street kids, perhaps, a perfect fantasy mother with a secret name, who loves all children and looks out for them. Who would want to tell the real adults about this? Especially if they find a way to mar the projective power of it/her, as adults can sometimes do, or if access to the cult is not supposed to be available for children under the initiation age, and taboo. The names of the orishas are coded into catholic saints anyway in the syncretism of the cult -- it's not a far jump to imagine that the children would create their own code name.
EDIT: Whoops, OK, I didn't read it too closely. The article does refer to Yemaya. I think that's a very good surmise..
Edited by: chirons daughter at: 9/13/05 12:57 pm
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