Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

The Devil will pull you under the bed by your feet

Nationality: Colombian
Age: 52
Occupation: Spanish Teacher
Residence: Davenport, Florida
Performance Date: 4/29/2015
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

Informant (“M”) is a 52 year old woman from Bogota, Colombia. She moved to the United States in 1992, at the age of 30. She has two kids, a boy and a girl, who she raised in the United States. She has four siblings, two brothers and two sisters, she was the second born. She has a 102 year old Grandmother. Collection was over Skype.

 

Transcript:

“M: Cuando nosotros uh… youngers, uh…. younger? Okay and we lied, my mom said to us when you go to sleep tonight… that was scary… the devil is coming and grab you from your feet and taking you with him. Usually we went to sleep and we covered our feet very well, and wore socks, and the next day sometimes we lost one of ours socks. She would say the devil took the socks but didn’t grab us from our feet.

Me: So what this supposed to happen when you were in bed?

Yeah, because we was wearing socks and took our socks instead.

Me: Did he like stay or live under the bed?

M: Yeah! I believe he did, he was under the bed or under old blankets. Later we’d find the socks lost sometimes and believe “oh god the devil was here”. We’d later find the socks sometimes.

Me: So she said that only happened when you lied?

M: It’s only when we lied, ‘’I know you’re lying tonight and the devil will come get you from you feet’’ [imitation of mother].

Me: Was there any way to stop him, like could you confess that you lied or pray to stop the devil?

(Did not address question as I interrupted)

M: That was like 40 something years ago, I believe that was similar in the United States in the 50s. I don’t think it a very funny way to teach to behave.”

 

Analysis:

The monster pulling you under the bed by your feet piece of Folklore appears to exist in the United States, as was noted by “M”, often tied to the boogeyman. There are multiple references to the ‘under the bed monster’ and in American popular studies journals being cited in one article as “…so universal that we no longer stop to think about their origins. “(Shimabukuro, 2014). As identified by “M” at the end of the transcript, it was used as a method to convince her, by her mother, to tell her if she had been lying. This could be used to scare the truth out of a child, or if the child would not tell no matter what, as a way to negatively reinforce such behavior.

“M”s use of socks to protect her from the devil living under the bed appears to be used as a protection charm from the devil, similar to when children hide their heads under the blanket. It was also used as an indicator of the devil’s presence, as the disappearance of the socks may have indicated to “M” that the devil had tried to grab her and grabbed her sock instead.

Work Cited

Shimabukuro, K. (2014). The Bogeyman of Your Nightmares: Freddy Krueger’s Folkloric Roots. STUDIES IN POPULAR CULTURE.

“Green Room”- Pre-Performance Ballet Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/3/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Some Spanish

Informant (“A”) is a 19 year old, female from Rancho Santa Fe, California, and attends The University of Southern California. She is a Human Biology major. She is of European descent and her family includes her mother, father, and older brother who attends college in Texas. Informant has studied ballet for 17 years, including work in a professional company.

A: “Dancers, and, really, it seems most theater people in general, have a lot of rituals and superstitions. The theater can be sort of unpredictable you know? You could have rehearsed every day for a year and something can still go wrong during the show. Especially when you throw nervousness into the mix, things definitely can happen. Sometimes it feels like half of what we can accomplish is just because we were lucky.
The whole time up there you’re praying ‘’Don’t fall, don’t fall down’’, even if you’ve never fallen before, you just don’t know. And you’re not only relying on yourself too. Sometimes as a dancer you just jump and hope your partner catches you! If they’re not in the zone, things can end badly for you. Anyway basically performing is scary and a lot of dancers do things to try and make it less scary.
The first ritual is called Green Room. It’s where the whole cast meets together backstage and we all form, sort of a circle. The oldest member will then say something inspiring, whatever the cast needs at the moment. Then we all hold hands and do that thing where you, like… squeeze the persons hand next to you until it goes all the way around the circle again. This connects us, because like I said you have to rely on other people. Sometimes during this we pass around this green frog you have to kiss, I have no idea why. Then we all do a chant. Depending on the group or show the chant varies..”

Analysis: The superstition seems like a classic example of using a ritual to gain favorable luck of some sort for an event of particular importance. A way to increase control of an event whose failure would be very bad for the performer. It also seems to play quite an important part in binding the dance company together to allow increased trust amongst them. By reinforcing such a sense of community, it increases trust and belonging, things one likely needs if they’re putting themselves in such risky position as a public performance.

Religious ‘Crossing’ and Pre-Performance Chant Parodies

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/3/2015
Primary Language: English

Informant (“A”) is a 19 year old, female from Rancho Santa Fe, California, and attends The University of Southern California. She is a Human Biology major. She is of European descent and her family includes her mother, father, and older brother who attends college in Texas. Informant has studied ballet for 17 years, including work in a professional company.

A: “…Now this one is going to sound really weird but recently there was a production of ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum’ and there was this kinda offensive song sung in it.
This sort of got turned into a backstage chant, and like I’ve also heard other people do this too. We all huddle in and whisper this ‘We’re gonna rape, kill, pillage and burn, we’re gonna rape kill pillage and burn, eat the babies’. We say this multiple times getting louder each time until all of us are full on screaming it backstage. You know how people can like to scream vaguely offensive stuff, but its not that bad to us because we all know where it’s from. Then right before I go on stage I’ll do like a cross, you know the like Catholic one. I’m not really religious but I’ve been doing it for years. I think it started when I did a really hard solo and it had that cross in it. It basically tells me that I’ve done all I can and now I just have to perform. It’s another aspect of getting mentally ready, because so much of performing is about being physically but also mentally on your game.”

Analysis: The crossing seems to be a sort of parody of superstition. It may be an attempt to ‘use’ a previously accepted superstition in a socially accepted way or to comically parody their own use of superstition before the performance.
This backstage chant seems to be a sort of ‘trust building exercise’ that uses both humor and chanting to reinforce a sense of community. In high stress situations like ballet performances, such reinforcement likely serves to cater trust in other dancers, as the difference between an effective performance and a mishap could rely on other dancers.

A’s Baseball Game “Lucky Shirt”

Informant “J” is a 19 year male old college student at the University of Southern California, he is studying Neuroscience and is a Sophomore at the time of this interview. He was born in Danville, California to a Jewish father and as a result J has regular exposure to Jewish traditions and customs. Though he does involve himself with Jewish traditions, he does not practice Judaism and considers himself non-religious.

Bolded portion is a quick summation of the the particular piece of Folklore.

 

“J: We’re at game four, 2012 playoffs, and it was the As- Tigers. I’ve been an A’s fan my whole life, I grew up an As fan, even when my brother switched teams… I idolized him when I was a kid… I stayed an A’s fan, beacuse I love the As! This was the first time since the playoffs that I really cared a lot alot, I mean I cared when I was a kid but I started getting more and more interest and this is the first time they went to the playoffs in 7 years.

So we were really excited, they weren’t supposed to make the playoffs, they weren’t even supposed to win 70 games… they were the worst team in baseball. So we were at this game and it was a, if they win they got a, they got to play the next game but if they lost it was over. Everything was done for.

Me: Mmmm hmmm

J: So in this game they were losing 3-1 at the bottom of the ninth, and we were just depressed, thinking it was over with, we’re done. Except for they started to rally and they rallied, and this, Seth Smith went up and hit the game tying two win double. Everyone just started going crazy, we all started jumping up and down… we couldn’t breathe we were so excited and actually the guy behind me didn’t really think it was going to happen as well, because the whole stadium was kind of praying that this would happen. It was against the best closer in the game, and he got up and got really excited and actually spilled his beer on my shirt. I didn’t really think anything of it  because I was so happy that we were winning. I noticed it after it happen and was like “oh my god you spilled beer on my shirt”, he tried to clean it up but it didn’t really work it was already past, we were celebrating for like five minutes.

And so, after that happened, with two outs, the same guy on second. Coco Crisp  went up and hit a game winning RBI single and the whole place went crazy. That was one of the coolest if not the best game I ever went too. Period.

….

J: I felt like that shirt, every since it happened, had to be lucky. They did this amazing thing, this improbable thing. It’s something that no one could have ever seen them doing. Since that day, any time I got to an As game, I wear jerseies over it since it still has a stain and everything but I wear my shirt over that jersey, and every since that year they’ve got back to the playoffs every single time.

So I believe anytime I wear that shirt under my jersey, they got back to the playoffs.

Me: The next game in the playoffs, did they win that, were you wearing your jersey?

J: No. We went straight to it the next day, we were trying to do everything to make them do better but  I didn’t have my jersey on. I didn’t think about it at the time, I just thought “beer-spilt shirt”. I think maybe if I wore it it would of been better, I really think it would of been better seeing how good the shirts been every since then…

Granted the As lost the next game, and unfortunately they lost the playoff series, but I felt like that shirt, ever since that happened had to be lucky. Because they just did this amazing thing, this improbable thing, that no one ever could have seen them doing. They just did it. So since that day, whenever I go to an As game, I wear jerseys over it, because it still, it still has a stain on it and everything, but I wear that shirt under my jersey, ever since that year they’ve gone back to the playoffs every single time. So I believe that as long as I wear that shirt under my jersey, they’ll go back to the playoffs.

Me: That next game that they lost that, did you not wear your jersey?

J: No. I wasn’t at it.

Me: Do you feel personally responsible for the loss of the As?

J: A little bit. I’d rather not. I mean it was just a hard game and we just got back, we were actually at football practice and we came back and we were all sweaty and the game was on and we just went straight to it at one of my friends house. We were trying to everything to make them do better, but I didn’t have my jersey on. I didn’t think about it at the time after, because I just thought it was just this weird old shirt. But, after maybe if I wore it it would have been better. I really think it would have been better seeing how good the shirt has been ever since then, but i’d rather not take blame for it because it was really depressing.”

 

Analysis: The informant J has this folk belief that his shirt is “lucky” and can influence how his team plays. Although he doesn’t seem exactly sure that his jersey has this strong influence, and he cannot prove it does, he still has the belief that if he does not wear it, his team won’t do as well. He even mentioned that he feels some responsibility for having his team lose when he didn’t wear the jersey, and he really thought it would have gone better if he had. Folk beliefs around lucky items of clothing, especially for sports teams, seems very popular. Many times the people who wear the lucky items of clothing do not want to question its validity in case this somehow takes the luck away. This can lead to wide spread beliefs such as the one J explained above.

Pre-Soccer Game Ritual

Nationality: Vietnamese
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/29/2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Vietnamese

“D” is a 19 year old female student at The University of Southern California. She is a Chemistry major and interested in pursuing Pharmacy after college.  She is Vietnamese on both sides of her family and describes herself as very close with her sister, whom she shares many Folkloric traditions with. She played soccer up through high school and is currently active in the rugby community.

 

Transcript:

“D: Okay so before each game I would have, it sounds really weird, I would have a chocolate mocha and than I would have to put on my socks left first, than right second. I would also have to put my right cleat on before my left, and my left before my right, in reverse order basically.

Me: Was this because it happened sometime in the past and it worked?

D: It was because it was like a habit, and we won and I kinda just stuck to it.

Me: Do you think there is any validity to that helping you during the game?

D: No, it’s just a superstition. Like I would jump like three times before the whistle blew.

Me:  Was it just you do did the team sorta, did the team sort of condone it?

D: The team had their own little things to do, we’d all like get in a circle before and we’d like talk, we all usually said the same things, like to pump each other up and we’d do like a team sprint to like win.

Me: Do you remember when that started, you had to have noticed that and decided to do it again at some time.

D: It was probably when I was like 10 or 11, when soccer really started to get competitive rather than like recreational.

Me: Okay, so when you played recreational you didn’t have any superstitions?

D: No. It didn’t really matter because I beat everyone”

 

Analysis:

The pre-game ritual is a well known superstition used to enhance one’s luck in a game prior to the game, they are widely used by profession sports teams (Barabbi, 2014),( Yeager, 2014) and non-professionals alike. “D”s attempt to replicate prior conditions that allowed her to win in the past points at an attempt to replicate a past event that had a favorable outcome, possibly by keeping as many variables the same as possible. Though she does acknowledge it plays no effect on her performance, her continued use of the ritual points to it being reinforcing in some respect. Its use after she considered soccer to be more competitive likely means she did believe it to garner some sort of advantage at the time she conceived of the ritual (Tobacyk & Shrader, 1991).

 

 

Work Cited

Barrabi, T. (2014). World Cup 2014: 8 Weirdest Pregame Rituals And Superstitions. International Business Times. Retrieved 30 April 2015, from http://www.ibtimes.com/world-cup-2014-8-weirdest-pregame-rituals-superstitions-1603838

Tobacyk, J., & Shrader, D. (1991). Superstition and self-efficacy.Psychological Reports, 68(3c), 1387-1388.

Yeager, S. (2015). Pregame rituals of the pros. Retrieved 30 April 2015, from                                                                                                                   http://espn.go.com/espnw/training/article/6857252/pregame-rituals-pros