I curse YOU!
I came across MaiBao’s blog post about Hmong superstitions. After reading her blog, I remember all the superstitions that I heard about. One’s that I’m more familiar with are those that pertains to family members, mainly about cursing one another.
Vang and Vue can’t marry one another:
There was these two poor siblings, brother and sister. The sister got married to a very rich man. One day, the poor brother decided to go over and visit his sister and his brother in law. Not knowing how cruel his sister turned into, the brother’s sister packed dung/poop for him when he left to go home. While walking home, the brother kept smelling poop until he realized that it was coming from the packed lunch. He opened it up and saw that it was poop. He became furious and got down on his knees and cursed them; If one day a Vang marries a Vue, they will have no children and be rich, if they have children they will become poor. Also, If they are rich and have kids, their marriage life would not last long, either one of the parents die or they both get a divorce.
Yangs can’t eat heart:
There was a gathering, hu plig/ua neej, of some sort and among the people there was a father and a son, who was mentally disabled. Some of the people were cutting meat and they had placed the heart of the animal into the pot to cook. Later, they came back to the pot to fetch for the heart but couldn’t find it. The mentally disable son was near the pot and was accuse of eating the heart by the yang people. Teh father argued back that his son didn’t do it and also said that if they wanted revenge they could kill his son. The Yangs were furious and killed the son with no hestitation. Later on the day, the Yangs found the heart at the bottom of the pot, turns out, the Son never ate the heart. The Father than cursed the Yangs that if any of their sons eat the heart, they will go blind or die.
Another story to this superstitions is,
The father and son gathered at a gathering. The father accused the son that he ate the heart. The father than killed his own son and the Son’s mother or aunt cursed at the yangs that if any yangs eat the heart they will die.
Pertaining to Vangs: Father-In-Law and Daughter-In-Law are not suppose to be together.
One story:
Long time ago, the Son finally found himself a wife and married her. Througout life his Father and his wife had an affair until one day the Son found out. He was heart broken and killed himself.
Another story:
Long time ago, The son will get marry and the Father will have a taste of his wife first. After sleeping with the son’s wife, she killed herself. Her brother came to the funeral and cursed at the Father and Son that no Vang Father can enter their Son’s bedroom or eat together.
Ofcourse, all these happened back then that was just passed down from generations to generations.
I’ve heard of those superstitions/taboos as well. I am a Yang and that taboo of eating chicken heart only pertains to males. The story I heard has a slight variation. The Yang clan ua neeb. They left a mute to take care of the big pot of oil where they deep fried meat and chicken hearts. The men came to look for the chicken hearts, but couldn’t find it anywhere. Because the mute was tending the pot of oil, they accused him of eating all the chicken hearts. Before they could give him a chance to show them where the hearts were, they killed him and took his heart. It was after the ua neeb that they found the chicken hearts at the bottom of the pot of oil.
The Vang taboo is only to certain Vang clans. My grams is a Vang and her family doesn’t have that taboo. My SIL married a Vang and they have that taboo. There is another variation to how the taboo came to be. A Vang man married a wife. One night, everyone was at the rice field except for the man’s wife and his father. His father raped his wife. She was so upset that she killed herself. At her funeral, her mother cursed the family, declaring that a father of that Vang clan cannot enter his married son’s bedroom and the son’s wife cannot enter her parents-in-law’s bedroom.
There are so many ways to interpret the meaning and there’s never a set one. It really depends on the story how the story was passed down too. Thanks for sharing, Mai Bao! 😀