My informant heard this proverb in Lebanon, his home country. He did not recall the first time he heard it or who he heard it from. He said it is simply an Arabic folk saying that he picked up from friends and family.
This is not the first proverb I have heard that speaks of onions and garlic as aphrodisiacs. Unfortunately, my informant was uncertain of the exact meaning of the second line of the saying. It could mean that eating onions causes one to lose his erection, or that onions cause poor memory. My reaction was to interpret “forget it” as something like “it won’t be going away for days.” In effect, “garlic works, but onions work better,” was my immediate interpretation. On the other hand, it could be a mnemonic (much like our “yellow on black, venom lack; black on yellow, kill a fellow”) for remembering which of the two related herbs is the one that does the trick. As it rhymes in Arabic (Toum, bikoum, Basal, hasal), the proverb incorporates an element of appropriateness, one of the features of most any joke; and obviously, the proverb is for humor and entertainment rather than any kind of edification or instruction.
Monthly Archives: April 2012
The Feast of the Seven Fishes
This special feast was a tradition that my father’s father observed with his family before he married. According to my informant, this was the traditional meal of Christmas Eve. After going to church to attend the midnight Mass before Christmas Day, my grandfather’s family would come home and eat Seven Fishes Dinner, quite a generous meal, during the wee hours of Christmas morning. As my mother has always aimed to have dinner on the table around six or seven o’clock, I found this quite shocking, but my informant added that they did not arrive home until around one in the morning to enjoy the feast. This feast obviously included several varieties of seafood, not limited to just fish. My informant recalled salt cod, shrimp, and calamari/squid, as examples of items my great grandfather ate on Christmas morning.
Annotation/additional comments:
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, in an article on Dec. 22, 2005 (http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05356/625983.stm), recognizes the Seven Fishes of Christmas Eve as an Italian tradition and describes a restaurant owning family’s variation of the feast. Their meal includes “scrod florentine, breaded filets in a bed of spinach; anchovies olio, pasta cooked with oil, garlic and the salty fish; linguine with white clam sauce; fried calamari rings,” and “deep-fried smelts, decapitated and marinated in lemon.” This is the meal they serve at home, not at the restaurant. The family also serves the feast as a special at their restaurant.
In the article, the main chef adds that there are “many theories” regarding the meaning behind the Seven Fishes of Christmas Eve. He claims, “It has always meant the Seven Sacraments,” adding that some families celebrate with twelve or even thirteen varieties of seafood, to represent the twelve disciples and Jesus. He suggests that the arms of the squid may have symbolic significance (“how God reaches out to us”), and that “the eel was supposed to be the speed in which Jesus’ word travels through the world.”
Many changes in the feast have been made over the years in this family, including the removal of eel from the menu and of the heads from the fish, and obviously many changes have occurred in various communities since whenever this tradition began. According to the newspaper article, this family also celebrates their feast after seven o’clock rather than midnight like my grandfather. Regardless of the variations in religious symbolism and details of the menu, this traditional feast illustrates the role of food in uniting and defining a culture, in this case Italians or Italian Catholics.
Lebanese Dream Superstition
According to Lebanese folklore, my informant said, bad dreams should be interpreted as signs of good fortune. (This would be reassuring to me, as I have had my share of them!). The superstition says that once a scenario is played out in a dream, it will not be repeated in reality. Thus, it is also reflexive: a pleasant dream should not be received as a sign of good fortune to come.
My informant was not aware of the origin of this sign-superstition. He learned it from his family, none of whom he says actually believe it. I would most likely postulate monogenesis as a model for the origin of this superstition, as it is unique and counterintuitive.
This is indeed a unique perspective on dreams, one I have never encountered before hearing the superstition from my informant. As with many superstitions, odds are that there is some element of belief somewhere back in my informant’s family. Otherwise, it would be unlikely that the superstition would have been passed down and remembered by succeeding generations.
The Legend of the Dogwood
In Jesus time, the dogwood grew
To a stately size and a lovely hue.
‘Twas strong & firm it’s branches interwoven
For the cross of Christ its timbers were chosen.
Seeing the distress at this use of their wood
Christ made a promise which still holds good:
“Never again shall the dogwood grow
Large enough to be used so.
Slender and twisted, it shall be
With blossoms like the cross for all to see.
As blood stains the petals marked in brown
The blossom’s center wears a thorny crown.
All who see it will remember me
Crucified on a cross from the dogwood tree.
Cherished and protected this tree shall be
A reminder to all of my agony.”
(author unknown)
This poem of unknown origin canonizes an old legend about this twisted, beautiful tree. My informant originally heard of the legend from her grandmother, and was unaware of its roots. As neither the Bible nor other historical records have anything to say about the wood used for Jesus’ cross, the idea that the dogwood was used cannot be verified. The legend exhibits a high degree of Christian symbolism, which would lead me to guess that it has foundations in the Catholic church, which has always shown great interest in symbolism, perhaps as far back as the Middle Ages.
My informant said, “According to the legend, the dogwood was one of the largest and strongest trees in the Middle East at the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, and thus was the wood of choice for making crosses. Supposedly, the biggest and strongest was used for Jesus’ cross…. because of his pity for those who suffered on the cross, Jesus spoke to the dogwood tree and told it that it would be slender, bent, and twisted, so that it would never again be used as a form of execution.” She pointed out that one can look at a dogwood blossom and see that it has two short petals and two long petals in the semblance of a cross. The edges of the blossoms display a color pattern that resembles a nail wound, “tinged with brown (rust) and red (blood).”
My informant also recalled part of the legend not mentioned in the poem. Supposedly, three days after Jesus’ death, the dogwood trees began to wither and die. Several years later, woodcutters were amazed to have witnessed how forests of the trees they once used for lumber had been transformed into groves of twisted shrubs with fair blossoms.
Death Joke
When I die, I want to go peacefully, like my grandfather.
I do not want to be screaming in terror like the rest of the people in the car.
This death-humor joke, which my informant said he remembers from Saturday Night Live, is a fairly simple one to analyze structurally. According to folklorist Elliot Oring, the source of humor in jokes is the presence of “appropriate incongruities.” The joke introduces apparent incongruities – ideas that seem out of place, impossible, obscene, or otherwise wrong in some way – and the punchline delivers appropriateness or creates both appropriateness and incongruity at once. However, this joke is unique in that it reverses the order of the appearance of appropriateness and incongruity. Whereas traditionally the incongruity comes first and is justified by the punchline, here the first line (and part of the second) makes sense and the punchline reveals the sad incongruity – the old man fell asleep at the wheel. If the situation is sad, though, then why is it funny? Certainly a joke like this would not be funny for someone who has recently lost a loved one in a car accident. However, humor is a popular outlet in many societies for dealing with the concept of death, particularly societies like America who do not share universal beliefs about death and the afterlife.