A couple weeks back I wrote a series of posts about Kuchisake-onna, Japan’s infamous slit-mouthed woman. For the third installment, fearing that, owing to my relative ignorance of Japanese culture, I was woefully misrepresenting/misinterpreting an important folktale, I used Google translate to read authentic (and grammatically butchered) versions of the tale on the Japanese-language Wikipedia site. Then I looked up the Japanese take on the Jersey Devil. Why? To make myself feel better about butchering the country’s canonical urban legends (or, as I’m sure I would have argued at the time, to revel in the inherent mutability of oral tradition that exists between cultures, even in a media-saturated, post-post-modern age). I was not disappointed. The Japanese version, or, more accurately, understanding, of the Jersey Devil was awesomely nutty and involved a bunch of kids finding a big, crazy egg in the forest. Probably they thought they were hatching a Yoshi.

Anyway, I thought it would be a fun to look at the story of the Jersey Devil on three other international Wikipedia pages, summarize the results (including the requisite [sic]-implied Google Translate nuggets) and have you folks try to match each of the three versions to the Wikipedia site on which you believe it originated.

If you want to. Otherwise, just, you know, go straight to the answers. There isn’t a prize anything. And if there were, it would be something undead or coconut flavored or both, and nobody would want it.

(If you’re unfamiliar with the standard American telling of the Jersey Devil, here’s a Wayback Machine link for you)

Okay! (Rubs hands together creepily) Here we go:

Your Language Choices:

a.) Russian
b.) Italian
c.) German

1.) This version of the legend states that the devil’s mother was a witch who abandoned her malformed 13th child in the swamps of New Jersey, where the “beast of a humanoid form would become malignant over time.” This account also adds this unfamiliar detail: “In 1740, The local priests exorcise these marshes, preventing the monster to kill people, but exorcism last hundred years, and according to local stories the Jersey Devil continued to feed on men.” Also, apparently “from 1909 his popularity grew, over time it was believed that this was a Chupacabras From unnatural speed.”

2.) This Wikipedia site’s only entry for “Jersey Devil” is for the season 1 “X-Files” episode of the same name. Though most of the page is devoted to summarizing the episode (“Mulder, alone watching a dark alley near the forest, where according to Jack roamed the forest devil.”), there is a footnote containing this summary of the Jersey Devil story: “The legend of ‘The Devil Jersey’ known since the XVIII century, descriptions of the creature vary, but most of it ‘sees’ as a stealth, sneaking up on the cattle and attack him.”

3.) Easily the most thorough of the three entries in question, this language’s Wikipedia page offers the standard Mother Leeds version of the story, along with a variant in which the devil’s birth was the result of a gypsy curse, and a version in which “the devil is originally been a human child, who locked his mother in the cellar. According to another tale of the Jersey Devil was at the door, knocked three times and is said to have asked his mother to let him in, but the mother did not want a devil and sent him away.“ The page goes on to cite the frequent comparisons of the Jersey Devil to El Chupacabra, but imediately puts the kibosh on the possibility of any real connection, stating that “The Chupacabra is not traditionally depicted as a biped,“ and helpfully reminding readers that “the devil has never been described as prickly.“

ANSWERS AFTER THE JUMP

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