Category Archives: Folk Beliefs

“Chigger” Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/21/11
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

The Joke as performed by Lauren: “So there’s these two workers out in the field out in the Midwest, working in the woods or whatever.  One is like ‘Oh, fuck!  I’m getting bit up by a bunch of chiggers.’  And the other worker goes, ‘Whoa. Whoa.  They prefer chegroes.’”

Lauren told me that she learned this joke from one of her friends at high school in Santa Barbra, CA.  She said that the joke immediately became her favorite, and that she tells it whenever she’s in a group of friends that are sharing jokes.  She says it always makes her laugh because of its unusual quality and surprise ending.

Lauren said that she thinks the joke is obviously a play on words, with “chegroes” meant to sound like “Negroes.”  She thinks that the joke is a way of exposing the ridiculousness surrounding politically correct words, as the well-known “n-word” that rhymes with “chigger” is usually considered extremely racist and offensive, especially in the United States (where the joke takes place).

I agree that this joke is a way of poking fun at the sensitivity and political correctness surrounding words.  “Chigger” obviously sounds like “nigger,” the term most offensive to African-Americans, but the word “chigger” itself is not offensive (it’s a common word for a specific bug).  Still, the joke points out that words are simply words, and it’s context that makes them either offensive or inoffensive.

The joke also represents the common fear of using the “n-word” that exists amongst non-African-Americans.  Because the word is offensive to the particular race, many people outside that race (and within) consciously avoid using it in everyday speech because they don’t want to seem racist.  Hence, the worker that says “Whoa whoa whoa, they prefer chegroes” demonstrates a consciousness carefulness with offensive speech and words.

Lauren told me this joke in a room with one white male, one white female, and one black female.  Every one in the room laughed out loud when she was finished, demonstrating that the joke doesn’t cater to a specific race, but rather exposes the extreme degree to which some people take political correctness.

Folk Speech/Games

Nationality: American. Self-Identified Ethnicity: Caucasian
Age: 56
Occupation: Retired Teacher
Residence: Champaign, IL
Performance Date: 4/23/11
Primary Language: English

The phrase as performed by Pam:  “Eenie Meenie Minie Mo, Catch A Nigger By His Toe.  If He Hollers Let Him Go, Eenie Meenie Minie Mo.”

Pam said that she used this chant as a child to pick sides for games such as tag and kick the can.  Every person that wanted to play the game would put their shoes together in a circle, and one person would be the “counter.”  The counter would touch one person’s shoe for each word of the phrase, moving clockwise around the circle.  When the counter reached the final word, “Mo,” whoever’s shoe he or she was touching would be “out.”  Then, the process would continue until every shoe except for one would be touched and out.  That person would be “it” for the game, the position that nobody wanted to be in.

Pam said she probably learned this phrase from one of the kids in her neighborhood.  They would play games like tag and kick the can after school, and this phrase would almost always be used in order to designate who was “it.”

Pam said that she doesn’t remember using the term in a derogatory way, but she just remembers hearing people say it all the time.  Even though Pam grew up in a northern state (IL), this phrase was used not long after segregation ended.  Because she played these games before the popularization of the Civil Rights movement, she said that children would utter the phrase without second thought.  She now realizes that the phrase is racist, but she did not realize this as a child.

Even though Pam explained that the word “nigger” was not considered derogatory within her friend group, I think it was still likely a racist term.  However, the children that performed this phrase were probably unaware of that fact.  The phrase had likely been passed down for generations in the United States, blatantly representing racist values of white Americans.  The phrase also represents the tendency for children to experiment with their new understanding of words.  Even though most of the words are nonsensical, performance of the phrase demonstrates a child’s ability to rhyme correctly.

It is interesting to note that I also played this game as a child.  However, instead of saying the word “nigger,” we would say “Tiger.”  I had never heard of this earlier version of the phrase.  This difference most likely stems from the fact that people have become more racially conscious, social groups have become more racially mixed and people have become more politically correct.  That the phrase represents an extreme shift in popular culture in regards to racial tension.

Superstitions

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student
Residence: Oregon
Performance Date: 11 April 2011
Primary Language: English

Morgan comes from a very superstitious family. Her mother grew up in Northern Virginia (with some time spent in Washingon D.C.) and her father grew up in Pennsylvania. Morgan herself was born in Montclair, New Jersey. Her family then moved to Arizona, where she spent her childhood before moving to Las Vegas as a teenager. Her family has very strong belief in the supernatural and she shared with me some of their superstitions.

“Hold your feet up in the air while riding over a bridge or train tracks; press your hands against the ceiling when traveling under them, or through a tunnel. (And hold your breath while inside a tunnel!) – The first ones were made up by my mother’s best friend when they were children; the logic was that it’d keep the bridge from collapsing, etc. My youngest sister has been trying to popularize the idea of pressing your hands against the side of the car if a train passes by that side, to keep the train from toppling over, but it hasn’t been catching on.”
The superstitions about holding up the bridge or keeping the train on its tracks are definitely examples of magical thinking, more specifically Homeopathic (sympathetic) magic, which operates on the principal that “like produces like.” In this case, Morgan’s family uses a symbolic representation of an action to try and affect the entire situation. Potentially, the reason her sister is having trouble getting the new tradition to catch on is because magical thinking in the United States has waned as modernity progresses (probably, in this particular case, thanks to advances in engineering and architecture that have all but removed the threat of an imminent structural collapse).
The holding one’s breath inside a tunnel is a custom that appears in some form or another throughout most of the United States. Sometimes the belief is that if the person makes it to the end of the tunnel, he or she has the right to make a wish (like passing a challenge and receiving a reward). In this case, the breath-holding seems to be a in the interest of protection, as though the tension in one’s lungs and face could carry over and strengthen the tunnel. (This would not the be first breath-holding superstition that relates to protection; traditionally- particularly in the American South- one holds one’s breath while passing by a graveyard both to pay respect to those who do not have breath themselves and to avoid breathing in spirits with malicious intent.)

Chinese Religious Folk Practice – Calling the Soul

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 54
Occupation: Retired Banker
Residence: DeXing E. Rd. Lane 331 #28 7FL, Taipei, Taiwan
Performance Date: 3/18/2011
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

This folk practice was collected from my Father. My father was born as a farmer’s son into a veteran’s family in Taipei, Taiwan. His father and mother ran away from China to Taipei during the Chinese Civil War. Many of his cultural practices and beliefs are taken from mainland Chinese culture. Because of his background, he is considered a “mainlander” in Taiwan (Chinese in Taiwan are divided into Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese or indigenous). My father graduated from Iowa University with an MBA. His B.A was obtained in Taiwan.

When we were having our regular telephone session, he told me the following recollection on the phone in Chinese when we were talking about a few strange police cases in the past:

(This is not a direct transcription or translation. It’s based off what I remember him saying)

” When a man dies or goes missing in the mountains or river, and the police can’t find his corpse, they’ll always resort to calling his spirit as part of the investigation, like a sort of last resort. The police will take a taoist sorcerer and the missing man’s family, along with some of his possessions such as clothes, into the mountains or river; anywhere, closest to where the man went missing. The Taoist sorcerer will then perform a ritual and ask the family to call out the man’s name while holding out his clothes;  this practice is called the “calling of the soul”…. The family usually continues this “calling of the soul” until the body is found. And usually, right after this ritual is performed, the missing man’s corpse will actually appear or the police will find the corpse somewhere in the next few days. You might think I’m joking, but I’m not. Many cases have been solved in this fashion! You see it on the news all the time.”

When I asked my father the significance of this practice, he said:

“There is a traditional Chinese belief that a person’s soul stays on earth for a week before it leaves. The police ask the taoist sorcerer and the family members of the deceased to perform this ritual because the police have faith in this belief.”

I believe my father is quite right in the significance of this practice. The police and the people involved truly believe in this folk practice and they actually perform the “calling of the soul” as a last resort, after all the help that modern science and technology can give, to find the body of the deceased/missing family member. While I am not in any place to judge whether or not the folk practice of calling the soul or this folk belief is true or not, the fact stands that it has worked before, which furthers the belief in this tradition. Moreover, the idea of this practice appearing on the news as something legitimate the police do reveals the deep-set beliefs in the supernatural and the particular idea about the afterlife that Chinese culture have. This item also shows that despite the modernization of China and Taiwan, there still remains a heavy belief in the supernatural superstitions, practices and beliefs that were passed down generation to generation.

Chinese Religious Folk Legend – Unjust Deaths and Vengeful Spirit Women

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 54
Occupation: Retired Banker
Residence: DeXing E. Rd. Lane 331 #28 7FL, Taipei, Taiwan
Performance Date: 3/18/2011
Primary Language: Chinese
Language: English

This folk legend was collected from my Father. My father was born as a farmer’s son into a veteran’s family in Taipei, Taiwan. His father and mother ran away from China to Taipei during the Chinese Civil War. Much of his cultural practices and beliefs are taken from mainland Chinese culture. Because of his background, he is considered a “mainlander” in Taiwan (Chinese in Taiwan are divided into Mainland Chinese, Taiwanese or indigenous). My father graduated from Iowa University with an MBA. His B.A was obtained in Taiwan. During one of our telephone sessions, he mentioned the following superstition that he learned in his childhood from his parents. I’m paraphrasing and translating it here to the best of my memory:

“When a young unmarried virgin dies an unjust death because of a man…like if they were attacked or if they commited suicide because a man rejected them or cheated on them… the women needing a soul to reincarnate, they…as spirits… sit at the riverside as ghosts and transform into seductive women who are brushing their hair to punish and entrap lusty men. The vengeful spirits wait at the riverside, of course, late night, for lusty men to come and flirt with them. When the lusty men do come, the spirits take the men to their spirit homes, drink wine, talk, and have sex. However, the men, waking up the next morning, find themselves next to a pile of bones, leaves or decaying forest matter…and because of this…the men usually get so frightened they fall into a great illness and die.”

When I inquired my father on the truth of this superstition and his own beliefs in it, he said that he wasn’t sure if it was true or not, but he definitely believed in the riverside spirits. Furthermore, he said that when he heard this story in his childhood, his mother cited several relatives of neighbors in her village who drowned to death because of these vengeful spirits and one neighbor in particular who passed away because he fell to a great sickness after meeting one such vengeful female spirit. But, ultimately, my father thinks that parents tell their children this story to warn them against being too lusty or perverted; however, he reiterates that he doesn’t doubt the existence of these vengeful female spirits. While the belief in the supernatural and the implicit moral lesson (control one’s lust) taught to children is important in this item, I think the values the item attributes to men and women are more important. The superstition portrays women as weak individuals who are unable to fend off sexual attackers or “evil” men and because of this, fall to their demise. However, they come back as strong, powerful and vengeful beings to prey on their previous attackers. This suggests a belief in some sort of latent evil or vengeance in women. On another note, the item portrays men as lusty sexual predators who are unable to control their instincts and who lose their lives because of an uncontrollable lust. That is to say, the item also suggests and attributes an animalistic or predatory quality to men. Yet, this predatory quality seems to be frowned upon based on how this story is put to use–it’s a cautionary tale that tells its audience to restrain their lust. So we can infer that perhaps, in Chinese culture, a more idealized version of man is one who is in control of their sexual tendencies.

Interestingly, the vengeful spirit women in this item seem alike to the Banshee of Irish folklore and even the La Ilorona of Chicano folklore.