Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Horseshoe Protection

Nationality: African American
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/17/17
Primary Language: English

Informant: A family friend that lived in Timpson, Texas when she was younger and her grandmother would do this

Original Script: ” My grandmother used to have a horseshoe nailed over her front door. The legend was it was to keep the hants (a southern colloquialism for ghosts) from entering the house.”

Thoughts: Having a horseshoe over the doorway was a common superstition in Feng shui  believed that an actual worn horseshoe was infused with good energy because a horse was a strong powerful animal.

Forgetful Superstition

Nationality: African American
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/27/17
Primary Language: English

Informant: My aunt’s mother taught this to her when she was young

Original Script:” If you left the house, ready to go to school and forgot something, you go back to your home get what you forgot and before you leave you sit down for good luck”

Background: My aunt mother originated from Indiana and did this often for good luck.

Thoughts: I heard this superstition before, my friend whose mother is from Russia used to tell her this except before you leave on a trip you sit down for good luck. It shows the different variations from culture to culture.

Seafood proverb

Nationality: African American
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/8/17
Primary Language: English

Informant: My grandmother who lived in Indiana and her father told her this

Original Script: “Only eat seafood in the months that have an ‘r’ in them and don’t eat seafood in the months that don’t have an ‘r’ in them.”

Background:The months that don’t have an ‘r’ in them the weather is hot so the water is not good and the months that do have an ‘r’ the weather is cooler so the water is good to eat fish.

Thoughts: I thought this was kind of silly, I believe its just an old saying to warn you about seafood because they didn’t have to technology to know when fish is contaminated.

Guatemalan Eclipse Ritual

Nationality: Guatemalan
Age: 60
Occupation: Cook
Residence: Calabasas
Performance Date: April 23, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Note: The form of this submission includes the dialogue between the informant and I before the cutoff (as you’ll see if you scroll down), as well as my own thoughts and other notes on the piece after the cutoff. The italics within the dialogue between the informant and I (before the cutoff) is where and what kind of direction I offered the informant whilst collecting. 

Informant’s Background:

The informant was born and raised in Guatemala, but immigrated here to America when he was about seventeen. He has not and will probably never go back to Guatemala as he fears he will be killed.

Piece: 

When I saw my first eclipse… lunar, you know a moon eclipse? I heard… well first we moved to the country because my grandma was dying. I grew up in the city and when I moved into the farm, everything was new to me. So I remember when the moon eclipsed, everybody was there banging things- they were banging the ceiling of the house, they were banging drums, making noise, you know? Because they thought that it would be the end of the world. *laughs* I got so scared! *laughs* That night I couldn’t sleep. It was, it was kind of disturbing for me.

Were they trying to scare you?

I don’t know, maybe they were kind of, kind of ignorant you know? They thought that the moon was fighting with the sun. You know what I mean? And the sun was… it was like that. This is something that they’d think for years. They thought that the moon was fighting with the sun. So they were rooting for the moon and that is why they were making so much noise.

So they were cheering on the moon?

Yeah… it was weird. I don’t know if they still do that. They probably still do, or maybe not because you know… traditions sometimes die. It was in the 60s you know? The beginning of the 60s. I was very young.

Did they tell you to bang on things too?

They want me to. They want me to but I was like… scared. I was surprised you know cause I never saw one of those things. I mean I didn’t know that there was so much superstition in that… in that people’s heads. You know, I don’t know… there was dancing, they were looking at the moon. I was like… I don’t know. The only thing I remember I told my dad, “what happened?” And my dad just laughed. You know because my dad didn’t believe in all this stuff.

Piece Background Information:

Informant already expanded that he thinks that the people he witnessed partaking in this tradition were ignorant, and that he did not quite understand what was happening at the time.

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Context of Performance:

In person, during the day at informant’s house in Calabasas, California.

Thoughts on Piece: 

I could tell while collecting that the informant (who is my boyfriend’s father) was and still is very disturbed by this experience, which reflects in the fact that he is disconnected from Guatemala. He was very young when he witnessed this and it adds to why to this day, when we go out to lunch, he is always saying that Guatemalans are very superstitious- it scared him to death because he literally thought the world was going to end. Upon further research, I found further expansions on this belief that one must cheer on the moon during an eclipse so that it does not die. Apparently, without the moon, it is thought that there will be lots of deaths within the community and the age range of the persons involved in these deaths (children to elders) depends on the size of the moon being eclipsed.

Golem

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/25/17
Primary Language: English

Background:

My informant is a twenty-two year old student at USC. She is originally from Pennsylvania and came to LA to study screenwriting. As a writer, she makes it her business to be familiar with a variety of legendary creatures; she is ethnically Jewish.

Performance:

“I heard this from a rabbi, I think, when I was pretty small. I’ve read about it a lot since, so I’m sure a lot of what I think I know about this story comes from books and I just filled in the details later on…but from what I remember, a golem is this mythical creature in Judaism that is completely made of inorganic materials…99% of the time the story says clay but I’ve also heard about stone and mud, definitely mud, maybe not stone…so yeah, golems are these giant clay warriors that come alive by magic and protect the Jewish people when they’re in danger. Warrior is a good word for it, I think. There are a ton of stories about them, some more famous than others. But I’ve always thought it was so fascinating, these giant inanimate pieces of art coming alive to protect their creators.”

Thoughts:

This is not a story I was previously familiar with, and one that I decided to research more thoroughly. The Wikipedia page is fairly in depth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem#The_Golem_of_Che.C5.82m as well as on a number of Jewish sites, like: http://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/golem/. The second page says that the name “golem” comes from the Hebrew word for something “incomplete or unfinished.” It’s interesting that something that is, by name, unfinished would be called upon as a warrior or protector. The article also includes an ending to the story that Kieryn didn’t include: the golem’s power slowly grows out of control and the creator is forced to destroy its protector. It seems to speak to the idea that violence breeds violence, and perhaps isn’t quite the answer to conflict.