Author Archives: Antona Yost

Gray hair

Nationality: American
Age: 26
Occupation: Student/Opera Singer
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 23, 2015
Primary Language: English

Informant is a graduate student studying Vocal Arts/Opera at USC.  She is originally from New York City and just recently moved to Los Angeles.

“If you pluck a gray hair, three will grow back in its place.”

The informant first heard this proverb in New York City and says that, while living there, she heard it a lot.  She shared this proverb when one of our mutual friends was complaining about her gray hairs and wondering whether she should pull them out or not.  After sharing this proverb, several other of our friends (from various parts of the country) chimed in saying that it was bad to pull out gray hairs.  Perhaps this proverb has turned into a folk belief or vice versa.  More information would be necessary to determine this.

Analysis:

This proverb could mean several things: 1. Embrace your grayness, growing old isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  2. If you worry about getting old, you are worrying about things you have no control over instead of living your life 3. A warning against vanity  4. (best interpretation, in my opinion) Worrying about gray hairs causes you stress, connecting this proverb to the folk belief that stress causes gray hairs, therefore worrying about (ie. plucking) your gray hairs will cause more gray hairs to grow

Be the Pebble

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 21, 2014
Primary Language: English

The informant is a Junior at USC majoring in Choral music.  He is from Santa Cruz California and says that he loves using proverbs in his every day life.

 

“Be the pebble, let the water wash over you.  Don’t be the boulder”.

 

The informant first heard this proverb from his parents and said that he uses it frequently.

Analysis:

This proverb was collected in a natural performance.  The informant said this proverb to me when I was complaining about how stressed I was.  For him, it is advice to someone who is stressed, telling them to let it go and not let things worry them.  For the informant it also means that if you worry about things, it just makes everything worse.

This proverb’s use of the imagery of flowing water to symbolize letting things go, living life and not worrying has similarities to phrases such as “go with the flow” and saying something is “water under the bridge”.  Differently from these other phrases, this collected proverb also incorporates the idea that the water of life, so to say, will “wash” over you.  The use of this word implies that the process of struggle is a cleansing one from which people emerge smoother and better, much like the pebbles along beaches or in stream beds are polished by the flow of the water.

This proverb could also be used to advise someone to not stand in opposition to the way things are going, although when the informant used this proverb it did not have this meaning.  Boulders stand against the water and as a result are broken down.  In this aspect, this proverbs holds close ties to the proverb “go with the flow”, as both use water imagery to give advice against combating the current situation and letting things happen as they will.

Haircut good luck rub

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Coordinator for a medical team in Ecuador, former Peace Corps volunteer
Residence: Salt Lake City, Utah and Quito, Equador
Performance Date: 4/27/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant is a 23 year old woman from Salt Lake City, Utah.  

“My family has a tradition that, especially when the men in the family get haircuts, or, I suppose those with shorter hair, there is a space in the back of the neck – at the nape of the neck – with freshly shorn or buzzed hair that you rub it and it not only gives a delightful tickling sensation but its said to give good luck if it is done before the close of the day in which someone got the haircut.  But its not only applicable to men.  The only rule is that the hair had to be cut the same day.”

She does not remember who initiated this tradition, and says that it has been ‘ever present’ in her life.  She supposes that it probably came from her mother initially.

Analysis:

This custom could be seen as a form of Contagious folk magic. The luck of the person with the hair cut travels via the nape of their neck to anyone who rubs it that day.

This folk item could be interpreted that the person whose hair was just cut has been lucky (they have been ‘beautified’), and by rubbing their neck, the family member could hope for future luck, in looks or otherwise, for themselves.  A more likely interpretation however is that this folk item is used as an aid to a social interaction that can sometimes become awkward.  Whenever someone changes their appearance, especially if it is only a slight change, socially awkward or tricky situations can occur.  If the change is slight enough (ex. a man with already short hair gets a trim) there is the chance that people will not notice.  Having a situation where someone offers you the nape of their neck to rub lessens the potential for a faux pas by making it clear that they recently got a haircut.  It also, significantly, creates a socially acceptable scenario for a the hair-cutee to seek for and receive compliments on their new look without seeming vain, all under the guise that they are innocently offering their family member good luck through post-haircut neck rubbing.

When asked how she feels about this tradition and how she interprets it, she said:

“I think no one is laboring under the delusion that your luck would actually change one way or the other but it brings some sort of celebration of change and marking of moving forward, and your upkeep of your appearance as well as marking a period of time until your next haircut. It’s a good unifier, it’s a good tradition to have.”

Ecuadorian Monigotes

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Coordinator for a medical team in Ecuador, former Peace Corps volunteer
Residence: Salt Lake City, Utah and Quito, Equador
Performance Date: 4/27/204
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant is a 23 year old female, originally from Salt Lake City, who recently was a Peace Corps volunteer in the city of Guayaquil in Ecuador. While in Ecuador she lived with a host family and observed and participated in many Ecuadorian customs and traditions.  One tradition she was exposed to and participated in was the tradition of burning ‘monigotes’ on New Year’s Eve.  She describes her experiences and this folk ritual below.

“One period of the year when there are a lot of traditions was at the close of the year, so New Year’s Eve.  The tradition that I enjoyed the most was a tradition of immolating the monigotes. Monigote*, uh muñeca means doll, so monigote is a “large doll”. So they are paper-mached objects that came in a variety of forms.  You could typically, especially in bigger cities, you could buy them for popular cultural figures whether that’s like famous soccer players or a lot of just recent movies from that year or famous cartoons, historical figures from like comic books or the history of the country, all just this huge variety.

“And they came in all different sizes from the size of a normal doll more or less all the way to like a story high – you would have to strap it onto the top of your car.  You wouldn’t be able to fit it into your vehicle or carry it.  And so everyone bought what they wanted or you also had the option of making a monigote.

“So you could make one of either – it worked both ways – it could either be someone you liked or someone you disliked or you could do it for yourself, if you wanted good luck in the New Year, if you wanted to destroy and turn into ash the memories from the past year if things had not gone well.  People would often make them for their friends or people in their community.  People would do them of the president.

“So this all accumulated – they would be prepared for often months in advance, starting in October or September, and some of them were incredibly detailed, the paper mache was painted elaborately, and others were more crude and some were just the heads of figures or yourself or your friends, your enemies.

“However, on the 31st of December, all of them are collected together and set into the cross-centers, the cross section of the streets in large piles and filled with fireworks. Then, as the year turned over, you would set them ablaze and they would of course explode and catch everything that wasn’t protected on fire in a kind of glorious sort of heralding in of the New Year”

*Pronounced, using IPA [mu’njegotas]

The informant noted that she was fully welcomed to participate in this festival as a foreigner.  She even contributed two monigotes of her own, a minion and a giant giraffe.  She also mentioned that people of every age participated in this tradition.

“Everyone was welcome into it. It brings the community together.  I lived in a fairly large city and everyone, even if you weren’t close with your neighbors or with people who lived in the apartment you would all get together and it was a unifying activity.”

When discussing her interpretation of the tradition:

“I think there is a lot of symbolism in burning things, in immolating things.  We use them both in the US culture and in Ecuadorian culture to symbolize celebration as well as destruction and purification. It is encompassing of many different emotions.

 

Analysis:

There are many elements to this custom/festival.  The most obvious one, whose meaning the informant summed up pretty well, is the burning away of the past while simultaneously lighting fires of hope for the future.  In the West, some of our earliest tales involving fire and burning things have they element that fire should be used to burn offerings of good will and hope.  Thus, burning large dolls at a calendrically significant point is an offering of hope for the year to come.

Another interesting aspect of this tradition is its possible connection to harvest rituals, such as those documented by Mannhardt.  The informant says that preparation for these dolls begins in September/October which is a common time around the world for harvest festivals and their accompanying rituals.

Another interesting element of this ritual is the significance of the the fact that the dolls are piled up in the middle of a cross roads, or cross section.  Cross roads often symbolize decisions or the intersection between two significant forces.  New Year’s Eve is the cross section between the old year and the new year.  The association between cross roads and decisions could mean signify either that you are hoping that the burning of these dolls will bless your decisions for the coming year or it be a nod to the fact that it is not all about luck and that your decisions play a role in how the next year will turn out.

 

Images:

Ecuadorian Monigotes - photo by Alexandra Yost

Ecuadorian Monigotes – photo by informant

Burning monigotes - photo by Alexandra Yost

Burning monigotes – photo by informant

Suitcase for the New Year

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Coordinator for a medical team in Ecuador, former Peace Corps volunteer
Residence: Salt Lake City, Utah and Quito, Ecuador
Performance Date: 4/27/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant is a 23 year old female, originally from Salt Lake City, who recently was a Peace Corps volunteer in the city of Guayaquil in Ecuador. While in Ecuador she lived with a host family and observed and participated in many Ecuadorian customs and traditions.  One tradition she was exposed to was a New Year’s which she describes below.

“A New Year’s tradition was if you hoped to travel in the new year, around the cusp of new year, preferably on the last day of the old year, you were supposed to take an empty suitcase or an empty traveling bag and have it be completely empty but carry it or roll it around the block.  And to do so would symbolize that that empty parcel would be filled with memories and adventures.”

When asked whether this tradition was used to symbolize hopes for both physical travel and metaphorical ‘life journey’ travel (such as getting married, getting a new job, anything that is a major step in the journey of your life), the informant said that she only saw it used to symbolize hopes for physical travels.  She also said that it was not restricted to ages and that both the old and the young participated.

 

Analysis:

You see a pretty clear direct symbolism in this custom between the empty suitcase and the hope that it will become filled with travel memories.  New Years is a time of beginnings were disappointments in the old year are moved past and hopes are expressed for the year to come.

One interesting aspect of this custom is that the suitcase is rolled around the block.  This could symbolize both that, even though they hope to travel, home will still be with them and, similarly, that they will return home after their travels (their journey around the block both encompasses their home as well as starts and ends at their home).