Tag Archives: rural

A Proverb From the South/Midwest

“Better than a stick in the eye”

This is a proverb that the informants mother used to repeat to describe something that happened that is only marginally good, usually to put life in perspective. That circumstances aren’t ideal, but that they could be worse. It’s similar to the phrase “better than nothing”. Her mother grew up near St. Louis, Georgia, and rural Illinois in the 40s-50s.

“Better than a stick in the eye”  is a reflection of resilience, perspective, and a pragmatic approach to life’s challenges valued by the community from which it came. It highlights values of endurance, gratitude, and humor as essential tools for navigating life’s ups and downs, deeply rooted in the personal, cultural, and historical context of the time and place from which it originates. Considering the historical context of the 1940s-50s in areas near St. Louis, Georgia, and rural Illinois, this proverb reflects the economic and social challenges of the time. Post-World War II America was a period of significant adjustment, with rural communities often facing economic hardships and societal shifts. It could also predate this time and originate further back to times like the great depression with even worse economic devastation. The saying may sum up the ethos of a generation accustomed to hard work, modest living, and finding contentment in stability rather than excess.

Family Haunted House

Text:

“Gee [grandma]’s house is lowkey haunted, it’s messed up. The man who Gee got the deed to their land from, we call him Old Man Hattfield. When my mom and my aunt were growing up they would come home from basketball games really late at night, and one night they came from the back door. They came around the corner and my mom swears that she saw a man at the top of the stairs, and then by the time that my aunt and Gee got over there the man was gone, they didn’t see him. Obviously my mom was freaking out, she was scared to death. So they all went upstairs, there was nobody up there, the windows weren’t open, there was no way anyone could’ve gotten there. They think it was Old Man Hattfield, my friends still refuse to go upstairs at Gee’s house because they think it’s haunted by Old Man Hattfield. . That’s one story. Gee has another story about this dress. So when they bought the land it was from debt, so I think with the deed to the land came other things like this pocket watch and this wedding dress. It’s this white wedding dress, and I don’t know who’s it was, but Gee had this dress up until maybe 10 years ago until she finally got rid of it. She’d wake up in the middle of the night and swear she saw a woman wearing this dress at the foot of her bed. So eventually she was like, “I’m tired of this, I’m gonna burn this dress.” So she sets it out in the burn pile. But then she’s going through their stuff at least five years later, and the dreams had not stopped. So she didn’t know what happened, she thought the dress had been burned. Then she found the dress inside the house in a drawer, and she’s like “what is this? How is this dress here?” And she asked Papa and he said “Yeah I saw you put it in the burn pile but I put it back in the house.” They burned it after that and the dreams stopped. 

Context:

GR is a 19-year-old college student from a small town in Arkansas. His grandma, Gee, has told him this story, and many members of the family believe that Gee’s house is haunted. 

Analysis: 

The figure of a ghost woman in a wedding dress is a pretty common one. She’s seen in La Llorona, a ghost women who walks around in a white dress, and there are many other versions of the “White Lady,” female ghosts in white dresses. The white dress is commonly associated with wedding dresses, and in this story the ghost is in a wedding dress. The wedding is a huge important ritual for a community, and it’s a large moment of shifting identity for women. They go from being part of one family to another, from being in the pre-reproduction phase of their life to being ready for reproduction. From a maiden to a wife, soon to be a mother. Weddings are a moment of liminality, where magic often happens. Ghosts are another figure of liminality, where they’re not quite alive and not quite dead. They’re not in this world, but they’re not in the next. The ghost bride can represent anxieties of when the marriage ritual goes wrong, just like how the ghost comes about from the death rituals going wrong. The wedding ritual is very important to a community, because it brings about new members of the community, but it’s also very anxiety inducing for the bride, because a lot can go wrong in this new identity and in the moment between the two identities. It’s also frightening for people to see these ghost brides because weddings are often supposed to be a large celebration of happiness, and people don’t like to acknowledge when they are not. However, oftentimes throughout different cultures weddings are not a moment of happiness for the bride. They could be just an economic situation, they could’ve been forced into the marriage, they could be a child, the marriage could tie them potentially forever to a bad person. There are a lot of negative things that can be associated with marriages, but people like to turn away from those. That’s why the ghost bride comes out, as a representation of all the anxieties that moment of liminality can bring. Studying a specific ghost bride figure can also tell you a lot about women’s place in that specific culture. 

“Naked as a jaybird”

1. Text (folk simile)

“Naked as a jaybird”

2. Context 

My informant heard this piece frequently from her grandmother. She grew up in rural Tennessee, a small town with a population of about 900 people. If you’re going outside and looked like you’d be cold based on what clothes you have on, she’d often heard her grandmother say “Put some clothes on, you’re naked as a jaybird!” When asked, my informant made me aware that the phrase is not said in a joking manner, but rather just a normal, everyday phrase. When the phrase is used, she recalls that it is said in a more serious tone and in a way that doesn’t embrace nakedness as natural, but it is taken more negatively seeing it as a shock factor.

 3. Analysis/YOUR interpretation

The folk simile “Naked as a jaybird” to me, originally, seemed to imply one is fully nude. According to my informant’s rural Tennessee background, however, it is not used by her family in the same way. This is a prime example of Von Sydow’s proposed oikotypes as the meaning of this folk simile where one does not need to be fully nude, is a local variant of the original meaning that implies one is fully nude. The implication that the idiom does not always refer to a nude body, is a logical extension of the comparative method. The phrase is likely heard in more rural areas where there is more of a connection between animals and humans as opposed to cities. There also are no sexual connotations meant to go with this phrase, it is simply meant in a harmless way to say that someone simply isn’t dressed properly and should put on more clothes. When I first heard this saying, I immediately associated it with being another way to say that a person is nude but did not associate any sexual connotations. When you hear the phrase “naked as a jaybird”, are jaybirds naked? Birds don’t have clothes hence they are always “naked” and relating nakedness to a bird, lessens sexual connotations.

German Easter Fire Tradition

Context:

AH grew up in Westergellersen, a small village in northern Germany and attended these Easter fires throughout her childhood.

Main Piece:

“Leute in vor allem ländlichen Gegenden sammeln Holzmaterial und Buschwerk und türmen es möglichst hoch auf. Es soll weithin sichtbar sein. Es entsteht ein Wettstreit um das höchste Feuer. Am Karsamstag wird es angezündet. Das Dorf versammelt sich dann um das Feuer, es gibt Bier, Glühwein und Würstchen.”

Translation:

People from all the surrounding rural areas gather wooden material and shrubbery and pile it as high as possible. It should be able to be seen from far and wide. There is a contest for the highest fire. On Karsamstag (Holy Saturday, the day before Easter) it is lit. The village gathers around the fire, there’s beer, mulled wine, and sausages.

Analysis:

This part of the Easter festival celebration in northern Germany seems very useful for promoting unity and connection within a town. Because the villages compete for the tallest fire, the one that can be seen from the farthest distance away, this creates an in-group out-group boundary. Also, since gathering the materials for the highest bonfire takes time and work, the townspeople must work together, as they wouldn’t be able to achieve this highest fire on their own. Then, on the evening before Easter, when the fire is lit, this festival ritual turns into a communal gathering place for the village people. Beer, mulled wine, and sausages are all extremely common foods in northern Germany, and are generally associated with any festivals and gatherings, or seen as something like ‘fair food.’

The working mule who ate too much

Background: The informant was born and raised in Western North Carolina. He has lived in North Carolina his whole life. He wanted to share some Western North Carolina stories. He explained that this is just a silly joke story that “you’d be setting around and talking to folks maybe after game of golf or tennis, you might even be out hunting, having a coke or something and talking and people would throw out things like [this]. Just Western Carolina country humor.”

“A fellow had a mule that was a great worker but he ate too much.  Giving this some thought, the fellow figured the mule was dumb as a rock, so he decided to just cut back on his hay to see what happened.  So he cut the portion in half and mule didn’t seem to notice. Being pleased himself, for the next several weeks he kept reducing the amount of hay.  Finally, just when he got the mule where he could work without eating, the durn fool died.”

This basically just means if it ain’t broke don’t fix it or why try to mess with something good?

Context of the performance: This was explained to me over FaceTime.

While the informant described it as just a silly joke tale, he supposed it had the above meaning. It could also mean that you shouldn’t cut corners, you should do everything fully. The extended metaphor reflects a local attitude and reflects the relationship between culture and folklore, especially as this idea is expressed in a vernacular and metaphor largely exclusive to the region, perhaps demonstrating the historic-geographic method of looking at folklore.