The Legend of Big Liz
During the Civil War there was a slave girl named Elizabeth...who worked on a plantation in Dorchester County. Her owner was a very wealthy man who was extremely paranoid that he would lose his assets if the war reached his home and the North won. As things began turning out poorly for the Confederates, the owner decided to hide his treasures in the Greenbriar Swamp. He took Elizabeth, who he called Liz, deep into the swamp and had her dig a hole to bury the treasure in. After the hole was dug and the treasure placed in it, the owner knocked Liz over the head and into the hole with his shovel. He could not risk keeping a slave with knowledge of the whereabouts of his treasure. As she was lying unconscious on top of the treasure, her owner began shoveling dirt back into the hole. Just before her face was completely covered, she regained consciousness and began screaming. Her owner just kept throwing dirt into the hole, however, and eventually buried Liz alive.
Several days later, the owner was found dead at the edge of the swamp with no obvious cause of death. It is believed that the ghost of Liz killed him for revenge, and so no one will ever know the location of the treasure. Even today one can go to Greenbriar swamp and possibly catch a glimpse of supernatural swamp lights in the form of Liz’s ghost. Supposedly, if you drive to the swamp, honk three times, and flash your headlights, the ghost of Liz will actually come out at you.
The performance of the storyteller was not particularly frightening at any point in the story. It was told for the purpose of entertainment, and the storyteller certainly kept his audience interested throughout the tale with hand gestures and body motions. At ...
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...themes will most likely remain as the foundation behind the legend regardless of how much it changes.
Works Cited
Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings. New York: W. W. Norton, 1981.
Dorchester County, Maryland – Overview and History. 29 March 2008 http://docogonet.com/index.php?page=overview_history.
Dougherty, Susan. The Legend of Big Lizz of Greenbriar Swamp. Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries. 1973.
Eastern Maryland. Pathways of Civil War Women Through Maryland. 29 March 2008 http://mysite.verizon.net/vze7xm7b/id7.html.
The Little Slave Girl Ghost. True Ghost Tales. 4 April 2008 http://www.trueghosttales.com/stories/slave-girl-ghost.php.
Webster, Danielle. Big Liz. Urban Legends and Superstitions. 2 April 2008 http://urbanlegendsonline.com/cars/bigliz.html.
The storyteller had not witnessed the strange happenings at the school but claimed to know someone who had seen the disturbances. As a performance, the telling of this story was very matter a fact and my friend did not self-aggrandize; the performance was quick, to the point, but not particularly dramatic. The storyteller told the legend as fact and was not melodramatic about her role as storyteller.
550 - 8 p.m. _________. ___. ___. In the Lake of the Woods. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994.
“The effect of the narrator's telling of this story upon the reader, as well as of the mariner's telling of his tale upon the wedding-guest, make narration itself fundamental (as it is in Frankenstein)” (Dr. Michael Rossington) Therefore, this essay will talk about the different narrators found in both literary works and its narrative structure.
[During the telling of the story there were no meaningful gestures, just pauses when the storyteller couldn't remember certain details, or when she wanted to take more sips of her macchiato. The storyteller did not relate the story with intonation or pitch changes, nor did her rate change. It was more like the stating of facts she knew.]
“The Hitchhiker,” by Lucille Fletcher, narrates the unusual happenings Ronald Adams, the protagonist, experiences, while driving along the deserted and densely populated roads of the United States. Adams continually observes a hitchhiker, whom he first saw, having almost hit him, on the Brooklyn Bridge, and apprehends traveling on the highways, for fear this phantasmal man shall reappear. Struggling to grasp reality once receiving news of his mother’s breakdown after the death of her son, Ronald Adams, he reverts his attention to the hitchhiker, the realization of never having been who he thought he was, and being alone without protection from the traveler, both wrench his mind in two. Lucille Fletcher uses suspense to build the plot of, “The
very talent young man. He did wonderful tell the story of Eyeth. He had a special style. He was very careful with his story did not want to leave anything out. His grammar and clearness were very clear and smooth. He being curious how the story goes because had to remember each part. He pauses few time to remember what come next. He did a lot of role shift through the story. He names each one of his character with the name sign and when he talk about them he made sure we knew who he was talking about with the role shift. He had enough space for his story because had the whole screen in front of him. He keeps his eye where the story was going if had to move, he would move his eye to that position. His signing was beautiful, use a lot of gestures and body movement thought out the story. It was very clear and so the part was funny cause he was trying to keep the story alive so was so boring. He keeps the pacing very smooth and keeps it on going so not lost interesting in the story. Sometime in the story, he did pausing for few second but other then that was not BIG pausing. Phrasing, I did not see much of that. Facial Expression in the story was very important, Keith uses a lot of that show expression of the story how funny, or sad or angry for part of the story. Keith hands and sign show his classifiers was so clear during the Eyeth story. Keith did an excellent storyteller, he told his story the way he learns it. He was very excellent tell the
While telling the story the storyteller used very specific details to produce an effective presentation. He paused several times for dramatic effect, indicating that something important was going to happen. Also, he told the story confidently, rarely stuttering in a short of words. The storyteller appeared to be extremely knowledgeable on the subject because the incident happened to his older brother and due to the bridge's close proximity to his home. While listening to the story I noticed several details that seemed to be exaggerated for effect, such as the three male bodies hanging from the rafters. When reaching the climax of the story the teller did a great job in portraying the frightened expressions of the driver and passengers.
Wallace, Daniel. Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions. North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012. N. pag. Print.
The story is the most powerful and most compelling form of human expression in Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony. Stories reside within every part of every thing; they are essentially organic. Stories are embedded with the potential to express the sublime strength of humanity as well as the dark heart and hunger for self destruction. The process of creating and interpreting stories is an ancient, ongoing, arduous, entangled, but ultimately rewarding experience. As Tayo begins to unravel his own troubled story and is led and is led toward this discovery, the reader is also encouraged on a more expansive level to undertake a similar interpretive journey. Each story is inextricably bound to a virtually endless narrative chain. While reaching an epiphanal moment, a moment of complete clarity, l is by no means guaranteed, by presenting Tayo as an example, Silko at least suggests there is fundamental worth in pursuing and creating stories.
Throughout this paper I will explore the power of storytelling using the course lexicon and I will examine it in the context of two course texts. One of the texts that I will be referring to is by Doxtator, excerpts from Fluffs and Feathers and the second text I will be referring to is by Griffin, excerpts from Woman and Nature. The power of storytelling is a part of the mimetic world and because stories have so much power they can be used to help bring about dominant fantasies. Stories are told over and over again until they are reinforced and in this essay I will argue that the power of storytelling is a form of social control.
The subject of this report focuses on the phenomenon known as Urban Legend. Urban Legend, henceforth referred to as UL, is well known in the arena of folklore and other sorts of stories passed down through generations; however, it is relatively new to the world of literary composition as a legitimate genre to be analyzed and studied in texts by experts of literature. In fact, if it had to be labeled, UL would be considered a sub-genre of folklore by many of the experts. These stories are known as "modern oral folklore - typically a tall tale with a frisson of comeuppance of horror, related as having actually happened to a 'friend of a friend'" (Clute & Grant, 1997). UL is also considered to be very similar to myth and fantasy.
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