The Cooked Child: Urban Legends and Ancient Myths from the Malayo-Polynesian-Speaking World

In several publications J. H. Brunvand has discussed an 'urban legend' labelled 'the baby roast'. While treating this as an American tale current in the 1970s that spread to urban locations in Europe and elsewhere, Brunvand also mentions much older Malayo-Polynesian narratives from the South Pacific exhibiting the same theme-a child-minder mistaking an infant for food and cooking it. Yet he reaches no conclusion on whether this remarkable resemblance reveals 'cross-cultural borrowing' or 'independent invention'. Analysing the Pacific stories and drawing on Malayo-Polynesian narratives from Indonesia recorded by the present author, this article demonstrates that the best explanation is independent development. The article further shows how stories concerning the accidental cooking and sometimes consumption of young children reflect pan-human concerns about the possibility of cannibalism and the attribution of consuming human flesh to people implicitly regarded as inhuman or, in the Indonesian stories, to characters who subsequently transform into non-human animals.

Automated summary

This article discusses an urban legend called "the baby roast" and compares it with older Malayo-Polynesian narratives from the South Pacific. By analyzing these stories, the author suggests that the most likely explanation is independent development and highlights the concerns about cannibalism and the attribution of consuming human flesh to non-human characters.