Urban Legends - “The Accidental Cannibals”

Tale Type 1339 “Strange Foods” has this general summary: Miscellaneous type with diverse variants:
An ignorant man or woman is not familiar with a certain food.” Among the misunderstandings included in this very old story cycle are thinking sausage casings are a sack for the real food
inside, eating the skin of a banana or watermelon instead of the fruit, boiling tea leaves and serving them with butter, and mixing many foods together as one unpalatable dish. At the end of this string of traditional numbskull food tales is 1339G “The Relative in the Urn,” a modern legend on the theme of accidental cannibalism.

In this urban legend—widely told in Europe and wherever Europeans have migrated—the mysterious item thought to be food is (brace yourself!) cremains, that is, the ashes of a dead relative. Just after World War II, in a food package sent by relatives in the United States, a family in Europe (often Eastern Europe) finds a jar of powder without a label or any note of explanation. Assuming it to be some kind of American instant drink, the family stirs spoonfuls of the powder into hot water and drinks it. In other versions the powder is used as a cooking spice or thought to be dried coconut, bread flour, or a cake mix. A letter arrives later, explaining that the jar contained the cremains of a relative who had immigrated to the States years ago, died during the war, and had wanted to be buried in his or her native country. Sometimes the explanatory letter is in the same package, but it is written in English and nobody is available to translate it until after the cremains have been eaten.

British versions of “The Accidental Cannibals” sometimes describe the cremains coming in a package from cousins in Australia, but a version told in Australia “reverses the geography,” as Aussie folklorist Graham Seal put it in the story he titled “Ashes to Ashes”:

A Dutch family had emigrated to Australia, leaving the family farm and their relatives behind. Each year at harvest time the relatives back home would send over a box of apples from the farm, with which the family would make a huge apple pie.

One year the box of apples also contained a small plastic bag of grey powder. Assuming the powder was a special spice for the apples, the mother added the new spice to the pie. It was especially delicious, and the pie was all eaten by the time a letter, which had been delayed, arrived from
the Netherlands.

“We’re sending you the annual box of apples,” the letter said. “Hope you enjoy them. But the sad news is that Uncle Herman died last week. And as you loved him so much, we thought we’d send you his ashes.” The basic story has many variations. For example, here is one told in York, England, in 1986 and sent to me by a reader:

A group of young people on a “workfare” scheme [project to aid a needy person] were sent to decorate an old woman’s home. She went out to let them get on with the job, and she told them to help themselves to tea. When they felt like having a break, they had some trouble finding the tea,
but eventually found it and had their drink. When the old woman came home, she looked in dismay at the spot where the tea had been found, and she asked where the jar was. The decorators explained that they had used it all up. The woman exclaimed, “Oh! That was my dead husband’s ashes in that jar!”

In South Africa folklorist Arthur Goldstuck has found two versions of “The Accidental Cannibals.” The first, titled “The Spicy Letter,” is the typical scenario with a family in Italy receiving a package from their relatives in South Africa and using the contents of the ornate jar as a spice before they learn that these were “Uncle Giulio’s ashes.” The second story, “A Sniff and a Tear,” tells of an Indian family driving home after a memorial service for their late grandfather and being stopped by a policeman who demands to know what they have in “a neat little wooden box.” The box is opened, revealing white powder inside. “Aha! Cocaine!” says the policeman, and he sticks his finger into the powder and licks it “the way he’d seen it done in Miami Vice.” “No,” says the horror-stricken
driver, “those are the ashes of my grandfather.” (From The Leopard in the Luggage, pp. 103–105)

See also Australia; “The Corpse in the Cask”; “Human Sausage Factories”; Romania; South Africa; Tale Type

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