Pablo:
You shouldn’t put babies in front of the mirror.
They would get sick if you put them in front of the mirror.
I think that this is a distrust of technology. The same thing occurs in Feng Shui– it’s bad luck to put a mirror at the foot of your bed. I think it is a natural resistance to relatively new things, and the fear associated with seeing one’s reflection in a mirror.
Debbie Cook and Linda Richter
Kingwood, Texas
March 11, 2012
Folklore Type: Folk Belief
Informant Bio: Debbie is my cousin and Linda is her mother and my aunt. Debbie grew up in Kingwood her whole life. She was a teacher for elementary and middle school, but will soon be a stay at home mom. Linda was a stay at home mom. They both are incredibly sarcastic and humorous. Debbie just had a baby.
Context: I had flown home for Spring Break the evening before we drove almost an hour to my Aunt Linda and Uncle Frank’s to see Carey, Debbie, and their new baby Ashley. As Ashley was amusing herself with some suspended toys, I asked Debbie what some of the things she got told when she was pregnant were.
Item:
D: Everybody at work; older women, in the elevator, strangers, would tell us all this stupid stuff. They said she was going to be a girl cause I was craving sweets instead of the savory. Girls ride high; boys ride low. There’s supposedly a test with a ring and a string and if it turns a certain way it determines the sex.
A. L: Women lose a part of their brain for every child they have.
Informant Analysis: They both saw the different beliefs as kind of stupid and untrue. People were just trying to be a part of what was going on.
Analysis: I think the part about people trying to be a part of Debbie’s pregnancy and interacting is probably true. The things that were said had a lot to do with figuring out the sex of the baby, and women losing their sanity while pregnant. Pregnancy is really hard. Debbie was especially sick. I think women like having the connection of giving birth with each other, and talking about those sayings or those experiences is a way to welcome a new member to the crazy mommy club.
Alex Williams
Los Angeles, California
University of Southern California
ANTH 333m Spring 2012
Carey Cook
Kingwood, Texas
April 11, 2012
Folklore Type: Folk Belief
Informant Bio: Carey Cook is married to my cousin, Debbie Richter Cook. He is half American and half Australian. He is very sarcastic and funny.
Context: I had flown home for Spring Break the evening before we drove almost an hour to my Aunt Linda and Uncle Frank’s to see Carey, Debbie, and their new baby Ashley. As Ashley was amusing herself with some suspended toys, I asked Debbie what some of the things she got told when she was pregnant were. Carey chimed in, in the middle.
Item: If you start to break out it’s cause she is robbing you of your beauty.
Informant Analysis: He laughed, and said I dunno (shoulder shrug).
Analysis: Clearly, Carey did not pay much mind to his comment other than the fact that he thinks it is funny. Especially because he knows our family is notorious for horrible acne which my cousin is not exempt from. What underlies this possible folk belief or saying is that there are stories where mothers or step-mothers are angry because their beauty is fading as their daughters’ is growing. This is the process known as aging, but some women do not want to accept that. So the answer is that their daughter must be stealing their beauty for themselves. This folk belief is actually a reflection of women’s struggle to accept how they look as they age.
Annotation: There is a book called Beauty by Nancy Butcher where the main character’s mother, the queen, is so obsessed with being the most beautiful she rounds up all of the young girls in the land including her daughter and puts them in an academy where the teachers give them drugs so they lose their minds and learn that ugliness is beauty. The mother also uses potions and other concoctions to maintain her youth and beauty. In the end the main character confronts her mother and with some bad mixing of poisons and concoctions the mother dies, and it is hinted her beauty gets transferred to her daughter.
Alex Williams
Los Angeles, California
University of Southern California
ANTH 333m Spring 2012
When a Jewish girl has her first ever menstrual cycle, every woman in the family (and sometimes, any woman) will slap her across the face.
My informant recollects getting her period for the first time while she was alone with her younger sister at their grandma’s house. She was panicking because no one was home and her post-menopausal grandmother doesn’t keep the necessary supplies in the house. When her grandma got home that afternoon, she tentatively whispered what had happened. Her grandmother screamed in delight, raised her hand and slapped her across the face with full gusto. My informant started sobbing, and then her sister did too, because they had no idea why grandma was hitting her!
I’ve been on both the receiving and giving end of the slap, and it’s meant as as gesture of love, and a very exciting time. When a girl gets her period for the first time, it’s not unusual for the entire extended family to be informed, and then that girl is subjected to slaps as her aunts and cousins and grandmothers come to congratulate her. It’s part of the rite of passage that comes with “becoming a woman.”
The slap supposedly comes out of ancient times, when a woman getting her period was a sign of her coming into her sexual maturity–and needed to be slapped for being a sinful, sexual being (basically implying that she is a whore.) For most Jews now, though, the slap is a joyous, fun, and slightly painful tradition.
My informant is from Croatia, and her family goes back generations in a very rural part of Croatia.
In my informant’s grandma’s time, in their village, they didn’t have a doctor but there was always one older woman in village who knew how to handle diseases– this was my informant’s great-grandmother. She was also known as the town witch. She used to tell her daughter–my informant’s grandmother–all about fairies. My informant’s grandmother, great-grandmother, as well as most people in that area of Croatia, staunchly believe in fairies.
From my informant:
“Everybody knew that fairies exist. My grandma told me that with that certainty like she would state that the sky is blue. All the people from those hills who claimed to saw the faries had the exact same description:
– fairies were the most beautiful women. There are no women of such beauty on earth.
– they are always wearing white
– they are always seen near the water (ponds, rivers)
– they want you to dance with them in a circle. You must obey their wishes or you will die
– they are afraid of the fire
– they liked kids very much, and if you left your kid unwashed before bedtime, you would find the baby clean in the morning.”
Her grandma also told her about the father of her great-great grandma, called Andrija. Hewas the best looking guy in the region. He was tall, handsome, strong, very energetic and kind of quarrelsome.
One night when her great-great grandma was a toddler, her father went to close the stables (stables were always far away from house). He was very very late. his wife was worried. And when he finally came back, he was exhausted, soaking wet and angry. He said he came across fairies and they made him dance with them and they threw him in the water. They told him not to tell anyone or he’d die.
He ate his dinner then, went to bed and died in his sleep that night.