The informant learned this piece of folklore from her mother about how to build a house in China.
“You shouldn’t buy a house with a front door and the back door directly across from each other, because um, they say all the money is going to come in and go straight out.”
I remember hearing something about this being a concept of Feng Shui. I do not know if this custom is directly related but they are certainly correlative.
Annotation:
Part of this phrase was used as the title of the popular Janet Evanovitch novel One For the Money. This use plays on the audience’s familiarity with the phrase. It is used there as a play on words though since it is actually about doing one bounty hunter job literally for the money.
The informant talked about a folk remedy she learned from her mother and passed on to her children.
“You make it at the first sign of cold symptoms: scratchy throat, watery eyes, aches.
It is equal parts bay leaf, sage, and cinnamon. The cinnamon at the bottom gets all slimy like snot.
I had drank all the water at every rest stop from utah to minnesota and I had got some sort of water sick or something. Originally it had cayenne pepper and lemon in it too. That was practically un-drinkable. Now we separate it out into cayenne and lemon then the tea.
My grandma said if I didn’t get better in 12 hours, they’d take me to the hospital because I was like, 12 and really sick. But we upped the dose and I she got better really quick.
Now we take the cayenne as a pill, drink lemon-honey tea and do the rest of the icky tea in a cup.”
No one quite knows what about this works but, I tried it last time I was sick and it worked like a charm.
The informant related an Italian proverb learned while spending time in Italy.
Bottglia piccola, vino buono.
It means “small bottle, good wine.” The less literal translation is that good things come in small packages.
The informant said that it is used either when someone is insecure about their height or when someone has given a small gift.
The fact that this is a regional oicotype of a very common phrase in english is interesting. Did the phrase originate in Italy and travel to the states, or did they develop independently? Perhaps it is just a common sentiment and every culture has a way of saying it.
The informant related an Italian proverb which was told to him several times in Italy.
“Chi va piano, va lontano. Which means ‘He who goes slow, goes far.’
So, it’s like the idea slow and steady wins the race.”
He said that it was generally used on him to tell him to slow down when eating his food so he would be more able to finish it all. But he says that the general use was more in terms of setting goals so that you don’t have to be great at something when you start, but if you keep improving, you will go far.
The fact that this is a regional oicotype of a very common phrase in english is interesting. Did the phrase originate in Italy and travel to the states, or did they develop independantly?