Author Archives: Ruchika Tanna

A car parks in front of a hotel…

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Texas
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Here’s a riddle my informant learned at Camp Allen, a camp her Montessori School would attend for three days.

A car parks in front of a hotel, and two people exchange money. Why?

 

Hint: There’s also a dog.

 

In spite of how long ago my informant learned this riddle, it continues to be her favorite because nobody has ever been able to guess the answer.

Answer: It’s Monopoly!

 

In our society, children use riddles as a means of empowerment. This question should be easy to answer, since it is centered on a game that most people are familiar with from their childhood. In all of the years of my informant asking this riddle, however, not a single person has gotten this right. For a child to essentially outwit an adult is for them to contradict societal norms and defy expectations.

Put some salt in it

Nationality: Vietnamese
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Hanoi, Vietnam
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: Vietnamese
Language: English, Finnish

 

Although she is from Vietnam, my informant attends college in Finland. When I interviewed her, she was at USC for a semester abroad. Even though she has been living in Finland for the past few years, the folklore she is familiar with is very strongly influenced by her Vietnamese upbringing.

 

Below is an example of folk speech that she uses. (picture of text in Vietnamese attached)

 

Translated, it means “Add some salt into it.”

 

My informant uses this phase when amongst her Vietnamese friends, after a particularly bad joke.

What she means with this phrase is that the joke was bland, or “tasteless”. It’s taken good-naturedly by her friends, who respond in kind when she makes jokes that weren’t funny.

 

My informant said that one of her American friends has also adopted this phrase. Instead of using it in Vietnamese, however, he uses the English translation. She finds this amusing, but is also perplexed that there was no English equivalent.

New Year’s Rituals

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pennsylvania
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My informant has a diverse familial background. Her maternal side of the family has been living in Pennsylvania for about 300 years, and is deeply entrenched in the Pennsylvania Dutch folkloric traditions. Her paternal family has come to America fairly recently – her grandparents emigrated from Italy shortly before her father was born.

 

Her family has a variety of New Year’s Eve traditions that they practice.

 

The first is that on New Year’s, my informant’s father gives each family member a silver coin. He used to give them an actual silver coin, but in recent years has been distributing dimes wrapped in foil. They then keep these silver (or silver wrapped) coins in their wallet for the rest of the year. Doing so ensures prosperity for the coming year. Each year, my informant gets rid of the old coin, and receives a new one. She isn’t sure where this tradition came from, but thinks it came from her Italian grandparents who have passed away. A  Google search showed that this tradition is actually common in a lot of cultures. Even though she doesn’t know the origins of this tradition, she continues to believe in and practice it, which is a testament to the power of folklore and superstitions.

 

The second New Year’s tradition that my informant practices is that precisely at midnight, she opens the back door to let the old year out, and then opens the front door to let the new year in. She has seen this ritual being practiced elsewhere in the community, such as at her friends’ houses when she goes to celebrate New Year’s with them.

 

New Year’s is a liminal period, especially at midnight. Because it is a liminal time, there are many rituals associated with New Year’s. Oftentimes, there is a belief that your behavior on New Year’s will carry into the next year, such as in the case of the silver dime. It is a time of moving on, and of leaving behind the past, as my informant’s family does by ritualistically ushering out the past before welcoming in the present.

 

 

 

Ghosts and Catholicism?

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pennsylvania
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My informant has a diverse familial background. Her maternal side of the family has been living in Pennsylvania for about 300 years, and is deeply entrenched in the Pennsylvania Dutch folkloric traditions. Her paternal family has come to America fairly recently – her grandparents emigrated from Italy shortly before her father was born.

 

While visiting the local cemetery, my informant’s father told her the following story, which she recounted for me.

 

“When my sister was really little, she and my dad were in the cemetery. She pointed up on the hill and said, ‘Who are those people?’, but there weren’t any people there.

 

My dad is firmly convinced she saw ghosts. That probably stems from my grandmother, I guess. I didn’t really know her that well. She believed that when kids are little, they can see ghosts, or things that other people can’t, because they’re so close to heaven…kind of like when people say that dying people can see their loved ones who are dead because they are so close to heaven and they’re going to die soon. My grandmother was Catholic, and she always said it was until the first Holy Communion.”

 

This story is an example of the sometimes hazy boundaries between religion and folklore. Churches are institutions, but they have a lot of folkloric aspects. As Oring suggests, the two are differentiated by the methods through which information is communicated. Because there isn’t an official edict telling Catholics such as my informant’s grandmother that children can see the supernatural until their first Holy Communion, her belief is a folk belief, probably learned by talking to other people.

Don’t put your shoes on the table!

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Pennsylvania
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

My informant has a diverse familial background. Her maternal side of the family has been living in Pennsylvania for about 300 years, and is deeply entrenched in the Pennsylvania Dutch folkloric traditions. Her paternal family has come to America fairly recently – her grandparents emigrated from Italy shortly before her father was born.

 

One night, my informant came over to my apartment and immediately panicked because my roommate had her feet on the coffee table.

 

“In my house, putting shoes on a table means the worst possible luck, usually some kind of death. My dad’s exceptionally superstitious, but this is one of his most strongly held superstitions, so much so that after I go shopping, he confirms that there are no shoes in the shopping bags I place on our table.”

 

My informant had no idea where superstition originated, or what it meant. Out of curiosity, we looked it up, and found that this was an old mining superstition. When miners died while at work, in mining accidents, their shoes were brought back to their houses and placed on the table.

 

After hearing this, my informant exclaimed that this made perfect sense. Her town was primarily a mining community, and both of her grandfathers were miners. Her father probably grew up hearing this superstition, and without knowing exactly what it meant, he passed it on his own daughter, who continues to believe in it.