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From: iayork@panix.com (Ian A. York)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: I ate grandma!
Date: 20 Jan 1996 12:32:07 -0500

In article <4dpr16$chf@agate.berkeley.edu>, Justin D. Bukowski <jdb@condor.cchem.berkeley.edu> wrote: >In article <4dp9pl$h2u@panix.com>, Ian A. York <iayork@panix.com> wrote:
>
>[Emigres in Canada send packages back to family in Russia, one
>is Grandma's ashes, which are tasted]
>
>The version which has appeared on AFU before, and probably is
>in Brunvand, is the family in America sending packages to the
>British relations after WWII. The punchline is that the ashes
>were made into soup.

Justin is, as always, correct. I looked up the story last night; here's what I sent to my brother as amplification:

I got this from Brunvand's The Baby Train (1993, WW Norton & Co, New York, ISBN 0-393-03438-0). He spends 5 pages on it (pp. 75-79). It look as if the versions are roughly split equally between "it happened in this country" and "it happened elsewhere."

He first heard it in Roumania, and mentions - let's see - two Roumanian versions, two German versions, one Austrian, four from England, and one US version directed at Yugoslavia.

The recipients variously use it as an instant drink, a condiment sprinkled on roasts, bake bread from it, use it for soup, dried coconut, cake, or herbs. (Your version seems to be the only one where the recipients didn't like the taste! In some the food is 'gorgeous.')

He says this "has been a popular legend since the end of World War II when powdered foods first became available and were sometimes included in relief packages."

Brunvand notes that the story has precursors in other 'accidental cannibalism' stories, including a logger's song collected in 1941 (The last verse -

          "Oh God," said old Isaac, "You're worse than a sinner.
           You would eat up my poor brother, Moses, for dinner."
          "Oh God," said the captain, "Has me and my crew
           Been living three weeks an a barrel of tough Jew?"
                            Derry down, down, down, Derry down.)

and "a very grim anti-Semitic 'jest' that originated in the Renaissance. An Italian Jew, in order to smuggle a dead friend's body home to Venice for burial, dismembers the corpse and packs it in a large jar with spices and honey." Hilarity and hijinx ensue when he takes it on a ship.

Brunvand doesn't mention it, but it's clearly in the same tradition as the 'tapping the Admiral' story of the British navy. (Admiral Nelson dies at sea, body is put in cask of rum so alcohol will preserve it, reach port - there's no rum left; apparently to this day the navy uses the term 'tapping the Admiral' for 'having a drink'.)

Finally, Brunvand notes that all the cremain stories are clearly false, citing among other thing a letter from a crematorium operator that says cremains "are so similar to coarse sand or finely ground seashells that I believe no one could mistake them for soup of baking ingredients. ... I believe that the fascination with this legend ... simply shows most people's total inexperience with the results of cremation."

One point I forgot to note is Brunvand's comment that most of the stories place the incident as just after WWII, as Justin mentioned. He only mentions a couple of versions as having happened recently.