Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

Lacrosse Flow

Nationality: Turkish
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/14
Primary Language: English

This informant is my roommate who plays on USC’s lacrosse team.  I asked him if there was any folk superstitions or traditions widely accepted amongst the sport or team and this is what he told me.

There’s totally two huge beliefs in lax [the “x” looks like a cross, making it la-“cross,” but it is still pronounced like “lax” in “relax”].  Players always try to have the longest “flow” and the most eye-black on their face.  Flow refers to the length of someone’s hair and it gained its popularity when a player made a Youtube video about his “flow” making him a better player.  I’m not really sure where the eye-black trend started, but lax was first played by the Native Americans against rival tribes, so maybe players think the eye black makes them look more like warriors.  Obviously these are just superstitions but they everyone acknowledges their importance so it has become a part of the game.

Obviously these are two folk superstitions that have become popular belief in the sport of lacrosse, even though players know they aren’t true.  I’m not entirely true what these beliefs say about the sport itself or the players who participate but I think my informant touched on an important topic regarding the sport’s origin.  He said lacrosse was played as a game amongst rival tribes, almost like battle.  In some cultures, such as the Norse, hair length was tied to manliness, so maybe the eye-black and flow became popular because it symbolizes masculinity.

Rally Cap

Nationality: Turkish
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/22/14
Primary Language: English

This informant is my roommate, who grew up in Laguna Hills.  He played baseball up until high school, when he quit to play lacrosse.

Baseball has a ton of superstitions and lots of players do weird shit, like never wash their socks if they are on a winning streak or something, but the “Rally Cap” is known by all players.  It doesn’t matter if you are in Little League or the Majors but if your team is losing and you need a good inning everyone wears their hats upside-down, which is suppose to make your team play better or hit homeruns or something.

I know from my few years in Little League that the rally cap is a very prominent folk belief in baseball regardless of how effective it really is.  While neither my informant nor myself know how it originated, I can guess that it stuck into the baseball culture because of the “hat’s” importance to the sport.  Many people refer to hats as “baseball caps,” regardless of the embroidering on them and hats really aren’t worn in any other sport, making them unique to baseball.  From this perspective it sort of makes sense that a folk belief like this stuck for good.  Altering an item of clothing that embodies baseball seems natural, especially when a hats appearance is so easy to change by flipping it.

Don’t Pluck the Red Lehua Blossom

Nationality: USA
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/14
Primary Language: English

This informant is Hawaiian and a freshman student at USC.  I asked him for any traditional Hawaiian stories and he gave me this story:

The Ohia tree is often the first plant to grow on new lava flows, but don’t ever pick its red Lehua blossom because both the tree and flower are rooted in Hawaiian legend. Ohia and Lehua were young lovers, he a handsome trickster and she the most beautiful and gentle girl on the island. But, one day Pele came across Ohia and wanted him for herself. When he refused her, she turned him into a twisted, ugly tree. Pele ignored Lehua’s pleas to change him back, but the other gods felt sorry for the young girl. They couldn’t reverse Pele’s magic, but they did turn Lehua into a beautiful red flower and placed her on the tree so that the two young lovers would never again be apart. It is said that as long as the flowers remain on the tree, the weather is sunny and fair. But when a flower is plucked from the tree, rain falls like tears since Lehua still cannot bear to be separated from her beloved husband Ohia.

After a few follow-up questions I figured out that Pele is the God of Fire, who has a short temper. The story didn’t really teach a lesson but it does exemplify how much emphasis the Hawaiian culture places on nature and the environment.

No More Hiccups

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/16/14
Primary Language: English

This informant is a sophomore student at USC.  I explained all the different types of folklore there were and he decided to share his his recipe for getting rid of the hiccups that his mother swore by.

First you eat a lot of grapes, like 6-8 until your mouth is pretty full.  Then chew them up and swallow them quickly followed by a big glass of water.  After the water goes down, hold your breath for as long as possible and only let out small amounts of air at a time.  Finally when you absolutely have to, take a deep breath and your hiccups will be gone!

I really didn’t even know what to make of this hiccups remedy, the grapes seem to be completely out of left field.  However, I have heard before that holding your breath can help.

Bananas on Boats

Nationality: American
Age: 50-60
Occupation: Boat Captain
Residence: Kihei, HI
Performance Date: March 22, 2014
Primary Language: English

Context:

It was the last full day of my Spring Break vacation in Maui, and my parents and I had signed up for a snorkel/snuba tour out to Molokini Crater and Turtle Beach. The weather was rather poor – a light drizzle – and the water was slightly choppy. I was unable to swim that day, so I stayed on the boat with captain and most of the crew. I got to talking with the captain of the boat, and asked him if he knew of any sailing superstitions, as I knew that there were tons of them.

 

Interview:

Me: So do you know of any sailing legends or superstitions?

Informant: Well, I don’t know if this counts as a legend or something else, but there is an old Hawaiian – it started actually as a Hawaiian lore –

Me: Okay.

Informant: And it is regarding bananas on boats.

Me: Okay?

Informant: Yeah. Have you heard of this before?

Me: No, I have not.

Informant: Allegedly, it is bad luck to take bananas out on a boat. The reason being, you know, that it will lead to bad weather or mishaps or something like that. And the reason it came to be, from my understanding, and from now, what I understand it is pretty much worldwide.

Me: Okay.

Informant: From my understanding, it is something that people from anywhere are told this, and they are told to not bring bananas on a boa. But it started in Hawaii. When they did their runs from Samoa to Tahiti to Hawaii to Fiji and to all those places…

Me: Yeah?

Informant: They, you know, obviously needed food for these long journeys in these outrigger canoes, sailing canoes. And os they would load up green coconuts, green bananas, taros – things like that that would last a while. And they would start their journey. To you know, to Tahiti or Fiji or wherever they’re going.

Me: Yeah.

Informant: And they would be fishing the whole time because they needed protein and such and so you would catch fish. And the fishing was not really all that good until the bananas were gone. And so, after the green bananas finally ripened and the everyone ate the bananas, all of a sudden they would start catching fish.

[Laughter]

Informant: and so they believed that, you know, that once the bananas were gone they would catch fish and good things would happen. They didn’t really put two and two together that once they got a few days out where the fishing was better and they would start catching fish. So that’s where that came from.

Me: That is really cool.

Informant: Yeah. Here’s one of my more memorable experience concerning this. I remember, before I captained this boat, doing tours out to Molokini and Turtle Beach and other snorkel/snuba spots, I was a fisherman. You know, big game fish – ahi, mahi mahi, the like. Huge fish.

Me: Uh huh.

Informant: And my first mate was a Hawaiian, and he believed in this superstition wholeheartedly, would refuse to bring a banana on board. So one day, I wanted to prove to him that this superstition was baloney. So I hung a huge, huge bunch of bananas on the boat, and proceeded out to go about my day.

Me: And what happened?

Informant: At the end of the day, we brought in about 3200 pounds of fish.

Me: Wow, that’s a lot of fish.

Informant: Yes, and I told my mate, “See? There’s nothing to this banana superstition.” And he replied to me, “But, if we didn’t have the bananas on board, we would have caught 4000 pounds today, rather than 3200 pounds.” I gave up on trying to convince him that bananas did not bring bad luck when on a boat.

Me: Hah. That is awesome. Well, thank you very much for this. It is certainly something that I did not know before.

Informant: You are very welcome. I hope this project of yours goes well.

 

Analysis:

This superstition, like many others, deals with the forbidden, or something that is believed to bring bad luck. The explanation that the informant gave for the origins was truly interesting, in that it revealed how a superstition comes into being. The Hawaiians, and the Polynesian peoples in general, taking green fruits, including bananas, onto their outrigger canoes, and supplementing their provisions with fish, would have realized quite quickly that it wasn’t until the bananas were gone that they began catching more and more fish. Thus the belief that bananas on boats were unlucky.  A superstition is born when one action is believed to be correlated with another action or state of being. In this example, the first action is bananas on boats, and the second action is no fish getting caught, and the state of being is unlucky. Also, the fact that this belief spread worldwide is interesting. The Polynesians were some of the greatest seafarers of the Pacific, and so they would have passed on the superstition of bananas on boats being unlucky to the peoples that they met on their voyages at sea. Furthermore, they almost certainly would have influenced the American and European sailors who can to Oceania as well. Thus, given that the only method of travel between Oceania, America, Europe, and Asia was by boat, it is not surprising that a, originally Polynesian superstition has now become a belief that sailors worldwide are familiar with, whether they actually believe it or not.