Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

The Devil is Beating His Wife

Nationality: American, white/hispanic
Age: 22
Occupation: accountant
Residence: Scottsdale, Arizona
Performance Date: 25 April 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

White/Native American

University of Arizona, Arizona State University, University of Southern California

International Relations

Accountant for Make a Wish

English, Russian

Scottsdale, Arizona

25 April 2011

Folk speech- The Devil is beating his wife.

Used in the context of when it’s Sunny but still Raining.

“I think this is folklore. I once pointed out to my mother that it was weird that it was sunny outside but still raining. My mother…um she replied kinda in a matter of fact tone, that it was because the Devil was beating is wife. I just went with it, I didn’t really understand why. Let’s imagine that this was real, and the Devil inhabited some real space in the world. Rain falls down, is the Devil in heaven then? Makes more sense that Jesus was crying cause were sinners or something.” Clearly, RA was focusing on the validity of the argument for using the Devil in this metaphor.

Though what RA said does make some kind of sense, I feel that there might be no real reason why this strange event is referred by this phrase. Disregarding this though, the idea behind this phrase is that the rain represents the tears being shed by the woman being beaten. It also makes sense, that the Devil, who personifies evil in Christian tradition, would be beating his wife. It would not surprise me if this metaphor was really old, going back to a time when most people were farmers, an occupation where understanding weather was very important. I had only heard this phrase once before from a friend. The only things they both had in common was that they were both from the Southwest, RA is from Arizona, my other friend was from Texas, and they were both self identified Christians. There is a good chance, that they both used this phrase because they were from a similar geographic area with little rain or because of the Christian overtones that are inherent in the metaphor.

Mexican Folk Remedy- Pulling Back Skin

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 47
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Sacramento, CA
Performance Date: March 15, 2011
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

The informant is a 47-year old accountant working in California, originally from Michoacán, Mexico. She lived a modest life as a young adult, having to take care of her family at a very young age while still finding success in management. She then moved to the United States with her husband to raise their family and now works in accounting. She primarily speaks Spanish with English as a second language.  He shall be referred to as MB.

“Jalar el cuero,” “jalar el piel”- The informant, MB, explained that this is often a “tough love” approach to curing a stomach ache. The child lies on his or her stomach and the parent begins pinching and pulling at the skin on their back repeatedly (but never to a point beyond moderate discomfort). The informal way of referring to this is to “Jalar el cuero” (“Pull the skin,” “pulling the animal back skin”), as “cuero” refers to the meat taken off an animal’s back.

This animal reference (“el cuero”) to the child’s back is largely reflective of MB’s origin living on a ranch in her childhood. Being very practical people, they turned to any basic solutions to medical problems before consulting a doctor. I believe it is a term of endearment, as MB is also aware of other ranch-related nicknames for children. Attributing an animal status to a child can be good-naturedly mocking, but as with animals, they are the objects of close care and nurturing.  The parent thus uses that term to express their compassion for the child in a humorous, not overly sentimental manner.

I believe that the seemingly non-medicinal nature of these remedies is reflective of MB’s Catholic origin. As the town was made up largely of the devoutly religious, they were unlikely to question that which made no scientific sense and instead function more on faith. After all, there doesn’t seem to be any scientific reasoning for this remedy, but MB insists that it worked.

Proverb: Better Late than Never

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Scottsdale, AZ
Performance Date: 25 April 2011
Primary Language: English
Language: Russian

White/Native American

University of Arizona, Arizona State University, University of Southern California

International Relations

Accountant for Make a Wish

English, Russian

Scottsdale, Arizona

25 April 2011

Proverb- “better late than never”

“So I turned in a paper 2 days late to my teacher last week. As I handed her the paper, I said something to the effect ‘I’m sorry it’s late.” She looked at me and then responded, ‘Well…better late than never.” RA explains, that to him, this proverb meant basically what it says. That its better to turn in something late than not at all.

Looking at this, I tend to agree. For major projects an school work, its better to turn in a more polished copy late, than a half-assed one on time, and more so than not doing it at all. However, when thinking about this statement, I find that I can identify specific times/instances when this is not the case. If it’s a short homework assignment that a teacher is grading that either you did it or you didn’t turn it in on time, than there is no reason to put in the effort if you can’t get partial credit. On the whole, this proverb is a good advice that wouldn’t hurt, maybe only some time and effort, and has the possibility of getting some recognition/credit for doing it at all.

Chinese Eating Habits and Health

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 25, 2011
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

The informant is an eighteen-year old student from Los Angeles. He was born in Taipei and received schooling in America. He had been studying in Taipei before moving back to the United States for university. He speaks Chinese and English and will be referred to in this transcript as “GS.”

GS: Back home, we have a lot of like, superstitions, or folk beliefs about what we eat. So the most common one is that uh, you are what you eat. Or in, uh, I guess that’s the English translation, but in Chinese culture we say, uh, you grow, or you give a boost to whatever you eat. So, um, if people have an eye problem, uh, relatives might say oh, you should eat more eyes. To get better eyes. If you have a liver problem they might say eat more livers to get better livers. Yeah, if you have, you know, let’s say, a dysfunctional problem, you might have to eat more, you know, uh, eat…phalluses. To, uh, get better, uh, at that. So like there’s this, this whole consideration of like, you are what you eat. So uh, once again, if you’re short on blood you might eat congulated, coagulated, like, duck blood or something like that. So, yeah. We also have this conception that eating fish makes you smarter. I dunno why, eating fish makes you smarter and then that uh, uh that’s about it, but-

Interviewer: So what do you think is the-

GS: Significance?

Interviewer: Yeah

GS: Okay, so most of the time that you say this, you might say it to somebody who’s sick or something like that, but we don’t’ really believe in that. I know, like, whenever my grandmother says it to me, she’ll go like, ‘oh, you wanna get buff so you eat more chicken,’ and then she’ll just take a big bowl of chicken and like put like five pieces in my plate. And of course her being my grandma I can’t reject that. So I was like, ‘okay, okay, thank you,’ and then she’ll say this, she’ll say in Chinese it’s called ‘tse te bu ge,’ okay so that basically means ‘tse’ is eat and then ‘te’ is chicken and then ‘bu’ is, uh, like boost or, uh, grow or increase and then ;ge’ is also, also means ‘chicken,’ but it also means ‘muscle,’ so she might say something like that or ‘tse gan bu gan.’ Which once again, eat liver, gan is ‘liver,’ um, ‘boost liver,’ ‘increase liver,’ so she’ll say that and then she’ll put a bunch of food in my plate. So, I mean, I think that rather than a true belief it’s more of like, excuse to make people eat more. Which I think that every culture has some form of that.

As GS is able to provide a perspective from both within and outside of Chinese culture, his assessment sufficiently touches on this tradition’s significance. What I find interesting is that the phrase “you are what you eat” has a completely different connotation in the United States: It is often used to describe health, in the sense that if you put healthy food in your body, you will be healthy, and vice versa. Alternatively, it is used as a pro-vegetarian statement (since nobody wants to be considered a cow or pig). This Chinese version instead represents a very Zen idea, that being that energy constantly flows from one to place to another. In that sense, eating eyes boosts eye health because of that transfer of energy.

At the same time, GS makes the observation that while the phrase is meant this way, but is usually used to encourage someone to eat more. I believe this is the case in a family context, as it is common for families to share compassion by sharing food with each other. This is especially the case in Chinese families, where all relatives are very close and there’s a high chance of cross-generational interaction such as between the grandmother and grandson in the case of the boy. The example he gave about eating chicken to promote muscle growth is also indicative of the reinforcement of the classic male image as the strong protector of the family. The grandmother, coming from an older generation, wants to continue the idea of men being strong, so she passes on this idea in the form of an endearing proverb to encourage the grandson to eat more.

Mexican Cooking Good Luck Ritual

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 47
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Sacramento, CA
Performance Date: March 15, 2011
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

The informant is a 47-year old accountant working in California, originally from Michoacán, Mexico. She lived a modest life as a young adult, having to take care of her family at a very young age while still finding success in management. She then moved to the United States with her husband to raise their family and now works in accounting. She primarily speaks Spanish with English as a second language.  He shall be referred to as MB.

MB explained that when she was first growing up, she lived on a ranch with a traditional adobe stove, heated by an open fire fueled by firewood. MB states that every morning, her grandmother would make tortillas from scratch, but the first tortilla would always get tossed into the fire. MB says her grandmother did this to “feed” the fire and keep it happy, to be sure it behaved properly throughout the rest of the cooking process in the morning.

According to MB, this tradition didn’t carry over with her mother or herself because of their transition to a consumer gas stove when they moved from the ranch.

To me, this personification of the stove fire reflects the great practicality of life on the ranch. Unlike modern households, where we are separated from so many of our amenities (we don’t see the fire in our stoves when we cook, and our dishes are cleaned within the confines of a dishwashing machine), those who actually do that work with their hands have a greater respect for such basic things as fire and water. This could explain the personification of a fire as something to be kept content for the sake of the people cooking, almost like a religious offering (considering how devoutly Catholic MB’s grandmother was). While MB and her mother didn’t carry on the tradition and attributed it to a lack of adobe stove, she appeared to have been willing to do so had it not been for the dangerousness of throwing a tortilla into the small fire of a gas stove.