Author Archives: ranzani@usc.edu

Corned Beef & Cabbage, oh my!

Main Piece: My mom is part Irish and learned from her family to eat corned beef and cabbage on every St. Patrick’s Day. I eat it now every year because I like it, but I guess there’s some tradition to it. My wife isn’t Irish, but she adopted the tradition and kept it in our family, and so every year she cooks us corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day.

 

Context: This tradition was done every year on St. Patrick’s Day while SR was growing up, and still continues now with SR’s family.

 

Background: SR’s mother is Irish, and grew up in a household that practiced many Irish traditions, and so she passed a lot of these onto her children. SR doesn’t feel particular ties to this tradition, but he likes the was the meal tastes, so he continues to practice it.

 

Analysis: This is particularly interesting because SR doesn’t practice this due to the Irish tradition: he eats corned beef and cabbage because he loves corned beef and cabbage! It is interesting to see how folklore and traditions can manifest, even when someone doesn’t think about carrying it on, or doesn’t have a reason for carrying it on. SR has passed this tradition to his wife, who never ate the meal before and who now cooks and eats it every year; even without meaning to, or without caring about the tradition, SR managed to keep it going.

 

Good Lord Willing!

Main Piece: SR: My mom used to always say, “Good lord willing and the creek don’t rise”, and everytime I say it now I think of my mom. She would pretty much say it whenever you’re hoping something would work out positively, or you think something would work out positively, like “We’re gonna go to Disneyland, good lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

 

Context: This phrase was said by SR’s mother as he was growing up, whenever one wanted to see a positive outcome.

 

Background: SR remembered this in particular when asked if his family has any sort of proverbs that they used to say; his mother recently passed, and so when he mentioned this he smiled and said that it always made him think of his mom.

 

Analysis: This proverb is widely used in SR’s family, and throughout the country as well, although SR said he hasn’t encountered a ton of other people who use this regularly. Upon further research, it seems to have originated in pilgrim-age America, where a creek flooding would impede your travel and make your journey much more difficult, or even perilous. I think it is always so interesting to see how literal phrases like this can turn into such meaningless words to toss around– nowadays, this saying has absolutely nothing to do with creek flooding!

 

Easter Eggs– only eggs!

Main Piece: KK: Every Easter, we eat this thing called “Eggs a la Goldenrod”… and it’s a made up name haha. And it’s basically… biscuits with, okay sorry, first, it’s a process, so first you boil the eggs and color them and hide them because its Easter, and once you find the eggs you crack them, take the shells off, and separate the yolks from the whites in two separate bowls and you make an egg gravy out of the whites, and then you mash up the… it’s a hard-boiled egg so you mash up the hard yolk so it’s kinda sprinkly kinda egg yolk. Then you have to put it together a certain way so you open a biscuit in half, on the bottom, you put in the egg gravy and then you put the yolks on top, and then you can either have sausage on it or on the side, and then hot sauce on it, and this is how we always use eggs in Easter. And it’s because my mom’s family was really really big, they had like five kids, so they had to do something with all the eggs! I don’t know where my grandma learned it, but my mom learned it from her that you basically make a brunch that is ONLY EGGS!

 

Context: This dish is made every single Easter with KK’s family.

 

Background: KK and her family love to cook, and have a whole slew of recipes they tend to cook with each  other, but this was the very first thing to come to her mind for something that was a traditional meal in their household.


Analysis: Upon further research, KK and I discovered that Eggs a la Goldenrod is a fairly common dish, and other people have made it too! KK thought it was just because her mom’s family was huge, and they had to use all the eggs that were made for Easter, but lots of people make this dish! Because KK’s version of this dish involves her family’s size, and using their colored Easter eggs for it, it is still a piece of folklore.

Jinx, you owe me a coke!

Main Piece: KK: My family is VERY strict on jinxes, and if you say something like, “oh it’s been so nice out today, the sun’s been out all day”, or like “we’ve been really lucky today, no traffic!” we have to recount what we say or else we WILL have traffic. Basically, it’s any instance where you say that you’re lucky about something, that’s like bad luck. To fix it, you either have to knock on wood, or say “don’t jinx it!”, you just can’t say it and then not fix it, because if you don’t recount what you said then something bad will happen.

 

Context: This practice is done frequently in KK’s household, as she said, her family is very strict on curses and jinxes.

 

Background: KK grew up in a household full of folk medicine, folk songs, and countless fun little traditions, so it only makes sense that this same family would also be extremely superstitious in their actions.

 

Analysis: Jinxes are quite common bits of folklore, and interestingly enough when KK began to tell this story, she stopped because she said “Oh no, everyone does this, that’s not cool enough,” and I had to tell her that the whole point is that other people should do versions of this as well! Because “jinxing it” is so common in our society, it is easy to forget that it isn’t real, and is actually a piece of folklore, and isn’t just something that humans do.

 

Rockin, Rollin, Ridin!

Main Piece: KK: My mom used to sing this song to us, when we were falling asleep and stuff, and for the life of me I can’t ever figure out where it came from. She went: “Tommy’s at the engine, someone rings the bell, Sarah holds the lantern, to show that all is well, rockin rollin ridin, all along the rails, heading for morning town, many miles away.” It’s about a train, if you couldn’t tell, but I have no idea where she got that song, but she used to sing it!

 

Context: This song was sung as a lullaby when KK and her sister were young.

 

Background: KK’s mother learned this from her grandmother, who probably heard the version sung by The Seekers and turned it into a lullaby, much akin to “A Bushel and a Peck”, which is often used as lullabies as well.

 

Analysis: Turns out, upon research, this song is by The Seekers, and is called Morningtown Ride! So many people I saw said that their mother used to sing this song to them as a lullaby, so somewhere along the way this song turned into a typical lullaby. It is interesting to think about this alongside the issue of Simon and Garfunkel and their “folk” music, because even though this song was authored and created by a band and publicized, the fact that culture has taken it and turned it into a lullaby has changed it into a piece of folklore.