Read Online Too Good to Be True: The Colossal Book of Urban Legends by Jan Harold Harold Brunvand - Free Book Online
Authors: Jan Harold Harold Brunvand
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clean, but never trust an old saw” (from his version of “The Tortoise and the Hare”). But, unsurprisingly, the fables of Thurber and other authors never passed into the oral tradition nor developed folkloric variations.
A good example of a modern oral story akin to an ancient fable was sent to me in 1991 by Jim Hutton of the San Antonio Express-News. He had heard it from his father, who had heard it in a conversation about greyhound racing in Texas:
At a greyhound race track somewhere in the United States, one of the dogs got fed up with endlessly chasing the mechanical rabbit around the track but never catching it. So the dog somehow figured out a better way to go.
One day when the starting gates opened, all the other greyhounds sprinted away, but this clever dog just turned and waited for the rabbit to come around the track. Unfortunately, when the waiting greyhound met the speeding metal rabbit head on, there wasn’t much left of the dog.
I’ll supply a moral for this sad story: Sometimes it’s better to run with the pack than to follow your own path.
Or take this fable-like story that circulated by word of mouth and in the media during the time of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska:
During the cleanup, environmentalists spent a great deal of time, effort, and money to rescue and rehabilitate the oil-coated birds and animals. In order to commemorate their heroic efforts, a group of environmentalists arranged to publicly release a seal that they had lovingly cleaned up and restored to health.
The press and a large crowd of spectators gathered to observe the heartwarming release, and as the crowd applauded wildly, the seal swam happily out into the bay—where it was immediately eaten by a killer whale.
Moral: You never lose your place in the food chain.
A third example of a modern animal fable comes from syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry, who published it just before Christmas in 1991. Many readers who sent me clippings of the column recalled that they had also heard the story told, so it may be an authentic legend, or the story may have become one after Barry publicized it.
Barry, of course, said he was not making up “The Story of the Christmas Goat.”
The goat was the pet of a family in Virginia, and one bitterly cold Christmas Eve they found their goat dead—frozen solid in a standing position. The family couldn’t dig up the ground to bury their pet, nor could they find any agency during the holiday that would take the goat’s body off their hands.
(If this problem of pet-corpse disposal seems familiar, it’s because you just read “Take the Puppy and Run” in Chapter 2.)
As the family was driving around with the frozen goat awkwardly loaded into their station wagon, they passed a Nativity scene set up in front of a church, and they immediately saw the solution to their problem.
Barry claimed that the family added their dead goat to the assemblage of animals around the manger. “So it was a Merry Christmas after all, at least until the thaw came.”
Here’s my moral for this story: Always keep a stable relationship with your pet.
Urban legends differ from fables in that many legends with completely different plots have essentially the same moral. What is taught (among other lessons) in lots of urban legends is that “He/she/they got exactly what he/she/they deserved.” And what “they” get is pretty gross—dead cats, dead grandmothers, a urine specimen, and worse. In only a few legends is good behavior rewarded; of course it’s just as poetic that way, too. These brands of poetic justice are illustrated over and over again in modern legends, extending beyond the prime examples of just deserts included in this chapter.
----
“The Fallen Angel Cake”
Most everyone in town knows these two ladies, so they will remain anonymous for obvious reasons. [So reported a small-town Canadian newspaper in 1982.]
The first lady was to bake a cake for the church ladies’
A good example of a modern oral story akin to an ancient fable was sent to me in 1991 by Jim Hutton of the San Antonio Express-News. He had heard it from his father, who had heard it in a conversation about greyhound racing in Texas:
At a greyhound race track somewhere in the United States, one of the dogs got fed up with endlessly chasing the mechanical rabbit around the track but never catching it. So the dog somehow figured out a better way to go.
One day when the starting gates opened, all the other greyhounds sprinted away, but this clever dog just turned and waited for the rabbit to come around the track. Unfortunately, when the waiting greyhound met the speeding metal rabbit head on, there wasn’t much left of the dog.
I’ll supply a moral for this sad story: Sometimes it’s better to run with the pack than to follow your own path.
Or take this fable-like story that circulated by word of mouth and in the media during the time of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska:
During the cleanup, environmentalists spent a great deal of time, effort, and money to rescue and rehabilitate the oil-coated birds and animals. In order to commemorate their heroic efforts, a group of environmentalists arranged to publicly release a seal that they had lovingly cleaned up and restored to health.
The press and a large crowd of spectators gathered to observe the heartwarming release, and as the crowd applauded wildly, the seal swam happily out into the bay—where it was immediately eaten by a killer whale.
Moral: You never lose your place in the food chain.
A third example of a modern animal fable comes from syndicated humor columnist Dave Barry, who published it just before Christmas in 1991. Many readers who sent me clippings of the column recalled that they had also heard the story told, so it may be an authentic legend, or the story may have become one after Barry publicized it.
Barry, of course, said he was not making up “The Story of the Christmas Goat.”
The goat was the pet of a family in Virginia, and one bitterly cold Christmas Eve they found their goat dead—frozen solid in a standing position. The family couldn’t dig up the ground to bury their pet, nor could they find any agency during the holiday that would take the goat’s body off their hands.
(If this problem of pet-corpse disposal seems familiar, it’s because you just read “Take the Puppy and Run” in Chapter 2.)
As the family was driving around with the frozen goat awkwardly loaded into their station wagon, they passed a Nativity scene set up in front of a church, and they immediately saw the solution to their problem.
Barry claimed that the family added their dead goat to the assemblage of animals around the manger. “So it was a Merry Christmas after all, at least until the thaw came.”
Here’s my moral for this story: Always keep a stable relationship with your pet.
Urban legends differ from fables in that many legends with completely different plots have essentially the same moral. What is taught (among other lessons) in lots of urban legends is that “He/she/they got exactly what he/she/they deserved.” And what “they” get is pretty gross—dead cats, dead grandmothers, a urine specimen, and worse. In only a few legends is good behavior rewarded; of course it’s just as poetic that way, too. These brands of poetic justice are illustrated over and over again in modern legends, extending beyond the prime examples of just deserts included in this chapter.
----
“The Fallen Angel Cake”
Most everyone in town knows these two ladies, so they will remain anonymous for obvious reasons. [So reported a small-town Canadian newspaper in 1982.]
The first lady was to bake a cake for the church ladies’
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