Is There a Factual Reality in Myth?

Anyone who grew up with grandparents would have as many traditional stories as possible. These myths are sometimes what these people use to give explanations to natural things that don't know their origin. One thing about myth is the value and belief we attribute to them. These beliefs are passed from generation to generation, sometimes, a myth might sound true but it is not factual.

Staying with my grandpa for a while in the village, I remember a thousand times he warned me about turning a mortar facing downward after use. There is this myth that a mortar facing upward after use will summon spirits to pound with it at midnight. The world spirit at midnight is enough already to scare a child away. Then I held so much into this myth, who dares want to invite a spirit into his home.

There was one time I mistakenly, without my grandfather's notice, forgot to turn the mortar downward. We slept peacefully and there was no proof of anything pounding at midnight. I became discouraged in turning the mortar down. Although one of the nights, I heard something like a spirit was actually pounding and I remember leaving the mortar facing up.

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Till date, I still can't explain if it was my imagination playing with me during my half sleep that I heard something that sounded like something was actually pounding the mortar, since the mortar was open, I couldn't tell if something of such actually happened for real. I woke up in the morning asking everyone if they heard anything pounding at midnight and their answers were no.

That didn't stop me from being forgetful, but such an occurrence never happened again till I relocated to the city. Personally I just think this myth is a method these parents used in cautioning children living with them not to leave mortar open to avoid it being dirty thus maintaining proper hygiene.

Another myth I heard that they should be debunked is the belief in a supernatural spirit called “ogbanje” this evil spirit is believed to live in the bodies of children, strike them with sickness that leads to dead after all attempt to cure proof abortive, they die and are reborn countless times.

In line with this myth, another myth of cutting off one of a child's finger before she is being taken by “ogbanje” is usually done to prevent the dead child from being reborn. I heard the story of how parents curse the existence of any child who after all forms of herbal treatment refuses to survive. These curses are forms of rejection that such a child shouldn't be reborn after he or she has been taken by “ogbanje.”

This myth holds a great fear in the lives of children and parents who find themselves on the verge of losing their child as a result of sickness. The fear can come from the pain the child would face going through brutality just because of the myth of not wanting the child to return again and die again.

Different cultures have what myth means to them and one of the significance of myth as far as tradition is concerned is the cultural value, the moral lesson and their ways of promoting and discouraging certain social and religious behaviors.