Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

God be with you

Nationality: American
Age: 54
Occupation: professor, administrator
Residence: Illinois
Performance Date: April 12, 2014
Primary Language: English

Yes, I always say “God be with you” whenever I say goodnight to you guys. And then, make a cross with my thumb on your forehead.

I think I started doing that when Vince was in Kindergarten. But actually, I first learned it from Sister Carolyn. At some meeting with parents at St. Joan, she told it to all of us, and said her parents said it to her.

And I liked it, so I started saying it, too.

Context: I specifically asked my informant, my mom, about this and she told me one one one.

Thoughts: Sister Carolyn, who the informant mentions, was the principal

 In our family, we say this so often now that we don’t even really think about it’s meaning. I say it to my dog. We use it interchangeably with “Good night.” or usually in addition to it, and we text it to each other a lot. But I think the informant, truly means it every time she says it.

Lucky Penny

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student, library assistant
Residence: California
Performance Date: April 14, 2015
Primary Language: English

So this is a team ritual for the St. Champion Outlaws, my old cheer team:

Every year before Nationals, we would get a penny of that year… our coach would give us a brand new penny of that year and the coach would get it done and like drill 2 holes in the side. And we would unlace our shoes and put it on the top of our right shoe (demonstrates to the front part) so you can see it… so imagine your shoes are laced, it’s on the top right of your shoe. So, we always prayed before we’d go on for health and safety on the floor and we’d all put our right foot in, which is the foot with the lucky penny.

How long has this been a team tradition?

I know it’s been for years… maybe a parent or one of the coaches thought it was cute. I think originally it was a penny on a necklace, but then they realized you can’t wear jewelry for competitions, so we laced it in our shoes. It’s like a lucky penny.

Why do you think they’ve kept it going all these years?

Um…it’s just a good luck thing and then it became a superstitious tradition.

Context:

My roommate told me this tradition when I asked her if she had any folklore. At first, she insisted “Asian people don’t have that.” But, after I explained what folklore was and that rituals and superstition counts. She told it to me one-on-one and I already knew competitive cheer was a huge part of her life.

Thoughts: 

A physical reminder before the competition of all the work put into the year serves as an important ritual. It clearly meant a lot to her and I know she is still in contact with her teammates and coaches. Plus, it is a great souvenir for after Nationals.

Don’t Reenter Home If You Forget Something

Nationality: American/Romanian
Age: 79
Occupation: Skin care specialist
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 4, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Romanian

Informant Data:

The informant is a Romanian American who was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1935. At age 37, my informant left Ceausescu’s Romania and arrived in the United States in 1972. She is a skin care specialist who currently resides in Los Angeles, California. She speaks slowly but very impassionedly.

 

Contextual Data:

My informant and I left the house to go for a walk at the beach and my informant realized that she had forgotten her sunglasses. I told her that we could go back in the house to get the sunglasses but she said it was fine because going back in the house is bad luck. I asked her to clarify what she meant by that and I recorded her response.

When I asked her why she believed in this superstition, she simply told me that she was told this superstition at a young age and has always believed it and always lived by it, just as her own mother did.

 

Item:

(Audio recording transcribed)

“It’s important before you leave the house to make sure you have everything you need because you don’t want to turn around. Because if you come back and set foot over the threshold back in the house, that means you’ll then have a bad day for the rest of the day.”

 

Analysis:

I’m not exactly sure what aspect of society led to this folk belief being originated. Perhaps this folk belief simply represents how society values those who are not forgetful as well as those who are always making progress and not taking steps back from progress (which I guess is what you can say those who don’t heed this superstition are symbolically doing).

Iele

Nationality: American/Romanian
Age: 57
Occupation: Real estate agent
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 11, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Romanian

Informant Data:

The informant is a Romanian American who was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1957. At age 19, my informant left Ceausescu’s Romania and arrived in the United States in 1976. She is a real estate agent who currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

 

Contextual Data:

My informant told me the story of the Iele at the dinner table during a family get-together. Several of my family members and family friends (all originally from Romania) were recounting memories from their childhood. My informant began speaking about how her grandma used to tell her all sorts of stories as a child (as early as when she was around 6 or 7). Her grandmother lived in Bucharest, Romania, but had parents that lived in a village about 15 kilometers outside of Bucharest, that told her stories about the Romanian countryside. At some point in the conversation, my informant mentioned the Iele. I asked my informant if she could speak more about the Iele, which resulted in the below piece of documented folklore in the “Item” section of this post.

When I asked her why she thinks she believed in the Iele, my informant told me how as a kid, the thought of Iele sounded so beautiful and thought it made sense that one would be tempted to get up and dance with the Iele. She also mentioned how she grew up in Bucharest and that she would never see anything like the Iele in the city, but only in a remote and beautiful place like the countryside. Furthermore, whenever as a kid she went on vacations to the countryside, there would often be a fog that would rise from the ground up, and that also convinced her as a kid that it was true.

 

Item:

(Audio recording transcribed)

“So in small villages in Romania, they…have this story about what happens in the summer. During the night, when it’s really nice and warm out, and sometimes people like to stay out late on their porch…you have to be very careful because close to midnight, sometimes you can see this beautiful…groups of beautiful girls with long, flowing hair, dancing to beautiful music. They all dance like they are in a hora. And as they dance, they do such a…it’s like they’re floating in the air, and they invite you to go dance with them, but you have to be careful not to do that because if you do, you’ll never be able to speak or see – you go blind and mute. And the one way you know that they’re not real…you have to look really closely when they’re dancing in the grass, and you’ll see that you won’t see their feet because…it all looks as if they’re floating, and that’s because you can’t see their feet, and that’s how you know whether they’re real or not. And their names are Iele. And I actually believed it when I was little.”

 

Analysis:

The story of these legendary creatures known as Iele seemed to appeal to my informant because it seemed to speak to her fondness of the countryside, that she liked this beautified, mystic ideal of the Romanian countryside. My theory is that on a larger scale, the legend of the Iele might speak to a desire of those who live in the countryside to pass on their belief in the beautiful and mystical quality of nature, passing it on in the face of more Romanians moving to the city, more Romanians acclimating to modern society, and the phenomenon of the culture of industrialized society become the dominating culture.

One should also recognize that the legend of the Iele is strikingly similar to the legend of the mermaids, which is worthy of noting as it speaks to the nature of folklore to have multiplicity and variation as it’s collected throughout the world.

 

For another version of this, please see:

“Haunted Forest/Alux.” Destination Truth. Writ. Neil Mandt and Michael Mandt. Dir. Neil Mandt. NBC Universal Television Distribution, 2009. DVD.

Animals Jumping Over the Dead Creates Undead

Nationality: American/Romanian
Age: 57
Occupation: Real estate agent
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: March 28, 2015
Primary Language: English
Language: Romanian

Informant Data:

The informant is a Romanian American who was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1957. At age 19, my informant left Ceausescu’s Romania and arrived in the United States in 1976. She is a real estate agent who currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

 

Contextual Data:

My informant and I just finished watching Francis Ford Coppola’s film Bram Stoker’s Dracula when I asked my informant how she liked the film. The conservation soon change to me asking the information if she had ever been told any stories about Dracula growing up as a kid in Romania. My informant told me in response that she was told a story as a child that has to do with vampires, but it’s different. She prefaced her account by stating that what people now see in horror movies about Dracula did not influence the stories she was told because, according to my informant, at the time my informant was told this story and people were circulating this story, few Romanians had read Bram Stoker’s Dracula. My informant also mentioned that it was her grandmother who shared this folk belief with her when she was a child and that when she asked her grandmother if she saw this happen herself, her grandmother said she didn’t but she knows her grandmother saw it.

 

Item:

(Audio recording transcribed)

“It used to be believed in the countryside that if somebody died…you know, in the old days, people, when they died…they were not taken to a chapel. They were, you know, tended to at home…and then the first night after they passed away before they were actually buried, the entire family stayed around, and they spent the night staying up and talking, telling stories about the departed one, and so on and so forth…but another reason that this was done was to prevent any animals, especially a cat, from jumping over the table where the dead person was, because if that happened, they would become undead. And…but they wouldn’t be any difference in the way they look. And people would bury them. But they would come back and take family members with them. And they would see this happening where somebody died, and thirty days later or sixty days later, another family member died, and so on and so forth. Or maybe even six months. And it’s not just one family member that can die, it can happen to more. And that’s because they’re coming back to take their family. And so my grandma said that what they needed to do, if that happened…they needed to go back and…with the priest…and they would have take them out of the ground and do this entire, almost like an exorcism, using a wooden stake to the heart. And lo and behold, my grandmother said, and when they did that, the person would just turn.”

 

Analysis:

It is interesting to note that this folk belief seems to have some strong connection, or perhaps even inspired, the whole mythology behind vampires and Dracula, especially the part where a wooden stake to the heart can kill a vampire. It seems very likely that Bram Stoker’s stories about Dracula came from old folk beliefs like the one shared above.

However, that still doesn’t answer the question why this folk belief was passed down generation to generation. My theory is that the reason this folk belief interested people was because this belief appealed to people’s fear of disease. The notion that there is a risk of disease in dead bodies combined with the notion that animals often spread disease (consider the Bubonic Plague) perhaps formed the foundation of this folk belief, and so people then perhaps believed that by ensuring this didn’t happen, they would be able to protect themselves.