Monthly Archives: May 2015

Texan Proverbs/Sayings

Nationality: Irish, American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student, Freelance writer
Residence: Dallas, TX and Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/10/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant says she grew up in Texas, and naturally picked up some Texan proverbs during her years there from neighbors, friends’ families, and teachers. However, she finds that they don’t always translate well to others.

Take, for example, the saying “They tried to hang him, but the rope broke.” It’s a saying that means someone has been incredibly lucky, but the informant recalls saying that to a new friend at college and getting a weird response. “I said this to her while we were talking about one of our friends who forgot to study for an exam, only to have the exam pushed back a week that same day. My friend looked at me, kinda horrified, and asked if we really still hung people in Texas. I had to laugh because I didn’t know how else to respond.”

Interestingly enough, this is one of a handful of colorful Texan sayings that were published in Anne Dingus’ 1994 article about Texan speech in Texas Monthly. The article was published in the magazine itself a day after it ran online. Here is a link to the online article: http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/more-colorful-texas-sayings%E2%80%A6/page/0/1

Another saying that the informant recalls using with frequent confusion is “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” which essentially advises people that if you can’t accomplish something one way, then you should try doing it a different way because it might be successful. “My friends had practically the same response to this proverb that they did to the one about the hanged guy being lucky,” she said. “It took me the longest time to convince them that Texan proverbs are very… metaphorical in the most colorful way possible.”

Swedish Årsgång: The Year Walk

Nationality: Irish and American
Age: 24
Occupation: Student, Freelance writer
Residence: Dallas, TX and Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/10/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant heard this particularly sinister and magical ritual from a Swedish friend from Malmö when she was studying abroad a few years ago in Europe.

The pseudo-pagan ritual of Årsgång, which, when translated to English, means Year Walk, was meant to reveal visions of the future to a person willing to perform the walk. In order to perform the ritual, the walker would have to make several sacrifices and meet multiple requirements. The first requirement was that the ritual be performed on a certain night, most often Christmas or New Years’ Eve, sometimes at the winter solstice, but always at midnight. For an entire day before taking the Year Walk, the walker must sit inside a dark room, and is not allowed to eat or speak. This was meant to disconnect the walker from the physical world, and open them up to the spiritual world before the ritual. The walker was to emerge from the room exactly at midnight and head to the town church, where he or she would walk counterclockwise around the building. The walker would then go up to the door of the church and blow into the keyhole, renouncing their faith temporarily. This would fully open the walker up to the world of the spirits and visions of the future, but it also invited great danger. Year Walking was full of risks.

One could expect to encounter many terrifying Swedish entities, such as the brook-horse (bäckahäst) and the huldra.  The brook-horse took the shape of a normal horse, and it would invite children to ride on its back. Each time a child mounted the brook-horse, its back would lengthen to accommodate yet another rider. When the horse felt it had enough riders, it would jump into a body of water, drowning all of its riders and taking their souls for its own. The huldra was a deceptively beautiful female entity, who often had bark and treelike features growing on her back instead of skin. Said to be the forest guardians, they would lure people to their homes to either marry them or kill them. Either way, the victim would be lost forever.

The walker’s ultimate goal was to look into the windows of the church (or to reach the town cemetery, depending on the locale) in order to receive visions of the future. If the walker encountered any of the Swedish entities, including the two mentioned above, the walker could escape with his or her life if he or she was able to resist the entity’s temptation. Visions of the year to come would appear in the cemetery or in the windows of the church, and the things the walker saw would symbolize the events to come that year. The Year Walk would end once the walker made it back to the church to reclaim his or her faith.

Årsgång was more commonly performed centuries ago, when magical beliefs ran much deeper in Scandinavia. The ritual was a feared one; not all walkers returned with their lives, and others went insane upon returning from the walk. Of course, the steps of Year Walking vary, as it’s a very localized ritual, mostly passed down by word of mouth.

In his doctoral dissertation on magic in Swedish black art books, Thomas K. Johnson, Ph.D. briefly discusses the ritual of Årsgång. I found a PDF version for free online directly at this link: http://media.proquest.com/media/pq/classic/doc/2030700591/fmt/ai/rep/SPDF?_s=mheSU7Ogp7e1UoKhtmSNlGL9Lao%3D

How To “Cheers” Properly on New Year’s Eve

Nationality: Irish
Age: 22
Occupation: Student, studying Biomedical Engineering
Residence: Bradenton, FL and Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/25/15
Primary Language: English

In the informant’s family, it’s unacceptable to clink glasses at a New Year’s Eve celebration without making direct eye contact with the other person for the duration of the toast. She says the tradition – and the superstition behind it – come from her mother.

“My mom always used to remind me to look people in the eyes when we raised our glasses in a toast,” she says. “She believed that avoiding eye contact would not only prevent good luck, but would actively invite bad luck upon the topic of cheers.” So if, for instance, someone made a toast to good health, her mother feared that avoiding eye contact during the toast would most certainly result in the death or illness of someone at the gathering.

The informant says her mother got the belief from someone she met in college. That person’s belief stemmed from a personal belief that looking into one another’s eyes connects people, and that it is this connectedness and positivity during a toast or a wish that determines that toast’s or wish’s success.

The Ghost of Lake Bella Vista

Nationality: Irish
Age: 22
Occupation: Student, studying Biomedical Engineering
Residence: Bradenton, FL and Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/25/15
Primary Language: English

The informant and her family used to live in Rockford, Michigan next to Lake Bella Vista. She says she grew up with the legend of the ghost of Lake Bella Vista, hearing it from neighbors and family members. She says she first heard it from her father.

According to the legend, a man who used to live on the lake went swimming late (well past midnight). He dove down under the water, and got his foot caught between some rocks at the bottom of the lake on accident. Without anyone around to help him, the man drowned, leaving his family behind. Years later, a group of teenagers (a horror story trope many will recognize) went swimming in the lake late at night. one of the girls started screaming that something had grabbed her leg, and before her friends could get to her, she was pulled under. Her friends swam to shore as fast as they could to get away from whatever it was that had pulled her under. They found the girl’s body floating in the water the next morning with a black handprint encircling one calf.

The informant says that the story is one usually told to kids at family get-togethers with neighbors and guests. Whoever tells the story usually pantomimes along with the narrative, and involves the audience by grabbing someone in the front row and pulling on their leg just as the ghost in the story had done. The informant says that the most performative part of the legend is when the storyteller puts a big, muddy handprint on the leg of the front-row “victim”.

Treehouse in the Woods Legend

Nationality: Jewish
Age: 20
Occupation: Student, studying Political Science
Residence: Yorktown Heights, NY and Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/26/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Hebrew

One of the older members of her neighborhood back home in Yorktown Heights used to tell the neighborhood kids about a treehouse that she and her brother built together years ago when they were just children. The elderly neighbor claimed that the treehouse was in the woods just outside of the town limits.

All the children wanted to find the treehouse, and spent months searching as deep into the woods as they could without getting lost or hurt. As far as she knows, no one has found the treehouse yet, but to this day kids still go looking for it as older children pass the legend down to their younger siblings. Some of the parents even join in, some out of curiosity and others to make sure the youngest kids don’t get hurt when they join in the search. While the legend hasn’t been proven false, the treehouse has yet to be found. Unfortunately, the elderly neighbor who supposedly built the treehouse has since passed away, so it’s up to the neighborhood children to keep the legend going.