Title: Crow vs. Magpie

General Information about Item:

Informant Data:

Sunglim Kim was born and raised in Seoul, Korea until the age of 17. Her family origins are Korean. When she was a junior in high school she moved to the United States, and went to high school in Seattle, Washington. She then went to UC Berkeley for her undergraduate degree, went back to work in Korea for a few years, and then came back to the United States to get her masters degree at the University of Kansas, and then went back to Berkeley for her PHD. Currently, she is a professor of Korean Art and Culture, in the department of Art History at Dartmouth College. This is her 7^thyear teaching at Dartmouth College. She is a mother of two children.

Contextual Data:

Social Context:At a very young age (around the age of 6) Sunglim Kim’s friends told her about this superstition. This was a commonly held superstition that all of her friends also believed in. When she was younger she said that she used to believe in these superstitions, and if she saw a crow in the morning going to school it would give her a nervous pit in her stomach that something bad was going to happen. However, she says now that she does not believe in these superstitions. But she will still say that it is a good omen when she sees a magpie.
Cultural Context:This folklore is widely held in Korean culture, although our informants did not know when this originated. This folklore originated in Korea. However, there are others cultures that associate the crow with folklore. In India for instance, the crow represents their ancestors, so it is not a bad omen. In Japan and America however, the crow is also associated with a bad omen, but not necessarily bad luck. There is also other folklore tied to these birds in Korean culture as well, Sunglim Kim described. For instance, there is a story about a boy saving a magpie from a snake. The snake then got mad at the boy and tried to attack him, but the magpie got involved and sacrificed itself for the boy. This story represents the magpie as the weak yet good person that doesn’t harm anyone else.

Item:

If you see a crow cawing it is considered to bring you bad luck, however, if you see a magpie singing, it is considered to bring you good luck and possibly will bring good guests to visit your house.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript of Associated File:

“There are two black birds. Crow is Bad Luck, but Magpie will bring good luck, or good guests will come to the house.”

Informants Comments:

The informant said that she believed in this folklore when she was a kid, however, she no longer believes in this folklore.

Collector’s Comments:

This folklore was interesting to me because Sunglim Kim did not still believe in the bad luck and good luck associated from seeing these birds, yet she admitted that she would still have positive thought associated with magpies and negative thoughts associated with crows. This shows how folklore will engrain an idea into peoples heads, even if they are not conscious of this belief. This piece of folklore is a Sign Superstition, which means if A, then B. So if you see a magpie, it brings good luck. Whereas if you see a crow, it brings bad luck.

Collector’s Name: Kipling Weisel

Tags/Keywords:

Dartmouth Folklore Archive