Author Archives: Ashley Avery

A Gift of Knives- Folk Belief

“If a friend gives you knives as a gift you have to give them a penny in return or the knives will cut your friendship”

The informant was born and raised in Long Beach, CA. Her mother is from Texas and her father was from Arkansas.

The informant could not recall when she first heard this superstition. But she had experience with it. When she was in her late 20s she received knives as a present from a friend at work. He then told her that she had to give him a penny in order to keep their friendship. She forgot to give him a penny and hasn’t seen or heard from him since then. The informant finds her experience ironic, and believes that it usually doesn’t hurt to follow a superstition’s rules “just in case” because you never know.

I actually had never heard of this folk belief before, but I’ve also never received knives as a present. Apparently in many cultures giving someone a knife usually means that your friendship is over or terminated. So giving knives as a gift is considered bad luck. I believe this folk belief is a conversion type superstition. In America a penny represents good luck and is used to convert the bad luck from receiving knives into good luck. However some people think that the penny is given in payment, so that you are actually buying the knives from your friend instead of accepting them as a gift. There is no bad luck attached to purchasing knives from someone.

Proverb China

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Xiaoliangkou chao jia bu ji chou

Couple quarrel hold no grudge

Couples don’t hold grudges when they quarrel

 

The informant was born and raised in the San Francisco bay area and moved to Southern California to attend college. Both of her parents were first generation Chinese Americans. Her family speaks Mandarin Chinese at home. She recalls her maternal grandmother, who was from China, saying this proverb all of the time; usually in response to her parents frequent arguments. She believes the saying is a reference to the belief that “fighting is healthy for relationships”. She believes that no two people are the same so if you make your complaints known to your significant other then you don’t have time for your thoughts to “smolder” and make you even angrier.

I have read this proverb once before in a textbook that I read for my Chinese class. My informant’s explanation of what the saying means sounds accurate to me. Perhaps people say this because people who have minor arguments are less likely to have big fights that can lead to the couple breaking up. Intimate relationships are very important to people, so people often seek out advice for how to maintain a happy healthy relationship with their significant other.

Annotation: This saying can be found in:

Liu?Yao, Shi, Bi , Y., T., Y,. N.P. (2010). Integrated chinese. Boston, MA: Cheng & Tsui Company.

A United States Southern Proverb

“What’s done in the dark, will one day come to the light”

The informant first heard this proverb from her mother when she was growing up. She remembers that both of her parents used to say it often. Her mother is from Texas and her father was from Arkansas. While she was born and raised in Long Beach, CA, she thinks the proverb is more common in the South of the US and perhaps originated from African Americans. She says that she has only heard other black people say it, but she doesn’t know if it’s related to race or if it’s because those people also had parents from the South like her.

The informant believes this proverb is a warning to would-be sinners or criminals and means that just because no one else was around when you did something bad does not mean that no one will ever find out about what you did. She used an example from her childhood, when she was about 10 she really liked a watch that belonged to her mother. So when her mother left for work she took the watch out of her mother’s room and wore it to school. After school she put it back in her mother’s room exactly as she found it and her mother never knew she took it. But a few days later she got in trouble for taking it anyway because her mother noticed that her watch had been worn. She had gotten away with doing wrong, but only for a short time before her mother found out what she had done.

I agree with my informant’s interpretation of this proverb.

Down by the Banks- Children’s game/song

Down by the banks of the Hanky-Panky

Where the bullfrog jumps from bank to bank-y

With the heeps, hops

Soda pops

Hey Mr. Willie and he went ker-plop

To play this game everyone sits in a circle and you hold our hands out to each side. You place your right hand on top of your (right-hand side) neighbor’s left and your left hand under your (left-hand side) neighbor’s right hand. The person who starts the game moves their right hand and slaps the right hand of the person to their left, while everyone sings the “Down by the Banks” song. The object of the game is to not be the last person to have their hand slapped when the song ends, so after your hand is slapped you want to slap the next person’s hand as quickly as possible. If you are the last one slapped then you’re out and you have to leave the circle. Then everyone else moves in and starts the game again until there are only two people left. The last two sing the song again, but instead of slapping each other’s hands they lock fingers and swing their arms back and forth at the end of the song the person who’s elbows are straight is the winner.

The informant said that she first played this game about a year ago when she was 8 and had first joined a Jr. Cheerleading camp at the local junior high school. She and the rest of her group learned it from their cheerleading instructor who she believes was an 8th grader. The informant thinks “Down by the Banks” is a waiting game, because “You usually play it when you are waiting for something. Like your turn to perform at a competition or something.” She says it’s fun to play and that “it helps calm you down so that you don’t get stage-fright”. As for the meaning of the song lyrics,  she is unsure. She doesn’t think they mean much of anything and that the lyrics are just fun to say because they are funny sounding and rhyme.

I also played this game as a little girl and I agree with my informant that it is a “waiting game”. Every time I played it as a child it was before some kind of performance or sports competition. The game is fun, silly, and fast-paced and can soothe nerves of a young girl troubled by stage-fright. My informant said that only the older elementary school girls play it 3rd-5th grade, she has never seen any 7th grade girls playing “Down by the Banks” together and only a few 6th grade girls. I believe this song has sexual overtones that the younger girls who are between the ages of 8 and 10 or 11 do not really understand yet, so the older girls in junior high might pass it down as a bit of a joke. The younger girls have fun playing and the older girls get some amusement from knowing that the younger girls don’t really know what their singing about. The song itself could be considered a kind of practical joke played on young girls who are just barely beginning puberty and are in a liminal stage between being a child and an adolescent.

Joke

Three guys, stranded on a desert island, find a magic lantern containing a genie, who grants them each one wish. The first guy wishes he was off the island and back home. The second guy wishes the same. The third guy says “I’m lonely. I wish my friends were back here.

The informant believes she first heard this joke from her father when she was little, she thinks maybe six or seven years old. She finds this joke funny because the third man makes a dumb wish. That wish then puts all three men right back to where they started before they found the genie, except this time they won’t get anymore wishes. She believes that the unexpected nature of the third man’s wish and the irony of these men situation makes the joke funny.

Aside from the joke having three men which is a sacred number in most Western cultures. I found that this joke of three people having three wishes that go awry in some form or another, is very popular and has many variations. I’ve found that it shows up in several joke books and even on television shows

Annotation: In an episode of Spongebob Squarepants (Season 2 ep 11) Spongebob, Patrick, and Squidward are captured by the flying dutchmen and are each given a wish. Squidward is throw into an alternat dimension and when he finally gets back home. Patrick wishes that Squidward were there on the ship to help him decide what to wish  for.                                                 

Springer, A (Writer). (2001). Shanghied [Television series episode], Spongebob Squarepants.