Tag Archives: hair

No Hair on Foreheads

“It’s a common superstition in India, and it used to be taken especially serious in my house, that people shouldn’t keep their hair on their forehead, like it should be kept combed back because if your hair covers your forehead it will bring you illness in the future.  My mom used to make me do it but when I started growing out my hair and refusing to cut it she let me just go with it even though I knew it was bothering her.  It isn’t a hardcore religious superstition, but it is followed more strictly than a lot of other superstitions.”

ANALYSIS:

There seems to be a sliding scale when it comes to how seriously certain Hindu customs are taken, and I find it extremely fascinating which ones land where they land on the scale.  From and outsider’s perspective, it seems a little arbitrary which ones are taken seriously and which ones aren’t, but I’d be extremely interested to find out if there’s anything connecting which customs are taken seriously and which customs are treated a little less seriously.

For straight hair, shave your head

My grandmother tells the story of the head shaving folk belief. Apparently even though my Grandmother received her cosmetology license in the U.S., and throughout her training they never told her it was true and she never saw any evidence that it was true but she firmly believed in the Colombian folk belief that if you shave a person’s head who has curly hair at a young age then the hair will grow back straight especially if they are very young. So my Grandmother, who hated my mom’s curly hair because it was too hard to style, tried many times to sneak up on my mom while she was sleeping and shave her head when she was a young child (4-8) but always failed because my mom would always wake up screaming. To this day my mom is an extraordinary light sleeper.

Analysis: Even with empirical evidence some folk belief is so strongly ingrained that people will act when it seems against someone else’s best interest. The concept of shaving a five year old girl’s head seems to border on abusive, but the folk belief was so ingrained that even to a highly trained professional the folk belief still remains plausible. Perhaps this is why, even among highly trained brain surgeons like Ben Carson, belief in creation myths remains so strong.

Hairy Man Road

 

Main piece:

Hairy man road is an actual road in Round Rock, Texas. There is a story that is circulated in the town that goes like this: “There was a little boy and his family was moving to Texas but he got separated from them somehow– maybe fell out of wagon– and he ends up living in woods but as he grows up he grows out of his clothes so because of adaptation he was just covered in hair from head to toe even his face was hairy. He was known as the hairy man of hairy man road and he didn’t know how to interact with people so he harassed everyone who came his way. One day he got run over by a car and his ghost lives there. People say they still see the ghost when they pass Hairy Man Road.”

There’s a Hairy Man Road festival in October and the hairiest men have a contest to see who’s the hairiest. The participants take off their shirts and there’s judges too. It’s held in the park across from the informant’s house and all ages show up for the event.

 

Informant also says she remembers being told that someone got hanged on the same road and you see his ghost too, which is a different story from the Hairy Man. There’s a lot of stories told to and from the residents about Hairy Man Road.

 

Background information (Why does the informant know or like this piece? Where or who did they learn it from? What does it mean to them?):

Informant grew up in Round Rock, Texas. She says she first heard the story in elementary school at a afterschool day care. A friend told her when everyone was sharing spooky stories. The road is actually spooky. She said it didn’t come to her mind that the festival remembering Hairy Man was weird to everyone else until she shared this with me.

Context (When or where would this be performed? Under what circumstance?):

It is a common stories told when sharing scary stories in Round Rock. Kids enjoy circulating the story to each other to scare each other. Because of the festival, the locals typically know the story already. When people drive by Hairy Man Road, a local might share to others if they are together in the car. It’s not really shared outside of the locals unless asked about. It’s not a secret, but it’s not common knowledge.

Personal Analysis:

I was surprised to hear about the legend of this road. I’ve never heard of it before, and I wouldn’t have if I didn’t ask a Round Rock local about their traditions. It’s interesting to hear and know about new small U.S. legends. I’m most shocked to find that a story that sounds fictional can become an annual festival. I’ve never experienced such a ridiculous and funny event before.

For another version of this proverb, see “The Legend of Hairy Man Road.” Weird Texas. Weirdus, n.d. Web. 25 Apr. 2017. http://weirdus.com/states/texas/bizarre_beasts/hairy_man_road/index.php

Barbados Hair Covering

Informant: In Barbados, all the women wear hats—the black women—because they think that if their hair gets wet, it will turn into snakes. Yes, so they always wear hats—it’s the funniest thing! They aren’t, you know, uh, fashionable, they’ll just wear anything they can plop on their heads. They don’t learn to swim either—which is horrible, really; it’s such an important thing to know, living on an island. Oh! They also don’t like to be out after dark.

The informant (my grandmother) was born and raised in Texas. She spent many years moving from place to place across the world with her husband, a banker, before settling in Connecticut long enough to work as an English teacher at the Greenwich Country Day School. She currently lives in San Francisco, CA.

It is important to note that the informant is a wealthy white American woman who had no prior knowledge of Barbadian culture or customs before she lived on the island for a few years. She does not remember exactly who told her about this belief, but she maintains that it was “common knowledge” in Barbados. The belief that wet hair will turn to snakes is not documented online, but it’s existence may be plausible. Snakes are not common in Barbados, but the island is home to the Barbados thread snake—the smallest known species of snake (circa 2008). Sightings of this small, typically dark snake (which is spaghetti-thin) may have led a woman to believe that a piece of her hair had transformed into a snake.

Citation: Dunham, Will. “World’s Smallest Snake Is as Thin as Spaghetti.” Reuters UK. N.p., 03 Aug. 2008. Web. 30 Apr. 2015.

Don’t Comb Wet Hair

The informant learned from his father, who learned from his mother, not to comb your hair when wet, as doing so would make you more susceptible to being struck and killed by lightning.

This belief is likely rooted in the observation of static electricity, a phenomenon which immediately evokes images of lightning.

The informant’s grandmother, who received no formal education, was born, lived, and died in Irapuarto, Mexico. The informant is generally mistrusting of all things he has learned from his grandmother, as he refers to most folk belief as “batshit.” Such beliefs hold no weight to him and serve only to be laughed at.