“Like you know people usually go like this all the time (she is sitting and shaking one of her legs up and down) you know it’s like a bad habit and your parents tell you to stop because it’s like your shaking your luck and money away.”

Samantha heard this superstition from her mother and her relatives when she was in kindergarten, living in Singapore. The superstition is said when people shake their legs because they are anxious, bored or just out of habit. For example, when Samantha sees her friend shaking his or her leg during class, she will tell him or her to stop because it is bad luck. The superstition spread because her parents told it to her when she was little and then she would tell her friends when she grew up. She also says that she will most likely share this with her children if she has any. This is an example of Carl von Sydow’s transition between passive and active bearers of folklore. Samantha was once a passive bearer as she listened to what her parents said and then she became an active bearer when she started telling it to other people. She thinks that its origins come from mainly bad manners, so parents will tell their children this to scare them because they do not want to be poor when they are older.

This superstition is widely held within the Asian community because my Korean, Japanese and Chinese friends all know about this. I think that since Asian families are very superstitious and focused on doing well in the future, they use luck and money as the main components of this belief. The theme of luck and achieving or losing luck is very prominent in Asian cultures. For Lunar New Year celebrations, many traditions incorporate the theme of obtaining and keeping luck, while getting rid of evil spirits. Many Asian superstitions follow these general themes and they mostly deal with luck. It reveals a part of what Asians believe in by focusing on luck and money.

I agree with all of these ideas of the origin of the superstition, but I also believe that it was started to stop children from engaging in this irritating action. Not only is it impolite to do it at a dinner table, it is also quite annoying for the person in the general vicinity of the person. In class, if a classmate is shaking his leg, it can be very disruptive to other students. I do not think that this superstition is only limited to children because it is incredibly applicable to adults. Adults have more awareness of what they are doing and so, they would be able to control their actions better. This superstition would be most effective for people who grew up in an Asian household because they would understand the value of luck and prosperity. I was taught to do things a certain way so that I would have a better future. It was all based off of luck and the idea that what we do now would affect us in the future. If we shake our legs now, then we will lose the potential to be wealthy in the future.

“Koreans have this thing where they tell you not to whistle at night otherwise snakes are gonna come and bite you. We say that if you keep whistling, the snake will keep following your whistling.”

Sung learned this superstition from his parents when he was about five years old. Although he learned it in his home in Los Angeles, CA, he says that it came from Korea. His family is from Seoul, so they know much of the stories from that area. The snakes could potentially have come from their prevalence in the rural areas of Korea, making this idea plausible. This superstition is usually told to children if they are whistling to make them behave and not be noisy at night. Parents do not want their children to disrupt the elders of the house or even neighbors. It is more geared towards children because adults would not believe this. As people get older, they drop this superstition because they know better and that it does not really happen. However, children, the passive bearers, will believe almost anything an adult tells them, just like the figure of Santa Clause. This is a magic superstition where an action might provoke an unwanted action.

Sung thinks that this superstition was created by elders in order to scare kids so that they would be quiet and not annoy people with their whistling. He is not quite sure what the origin of the story is, but he believes that it is all a lie and completely untrue.

I agree with Sung’s view on this superstition because whistling can be very annoying and disruptive to people that can hear it. It is difficult to make children stop doing something once they learn it. If parents just tell their kids to stop whistling for no reason besides that they are being noisy, they probably will not listen. However, if you scare the children with this superstition, they are more likely to be silent. Children are very gullible and believe most things that adults tell them, especially when they deal with scary creatures. As the monster in this superstition, snakes are very real to children. They are not some imaginary creature, but instead are actual reptiles that could hurt them. This superstition could be believed by children up until they get over their fear of snakes, so I am guessing around the age of twelve or so. I am not so sure if this superstition would work too well in American society now because snakes are not a big factor in a typical American household. Many Americans have nice homes that would prevent snakes from entering and attacking children. Living in a sheltered environment, children nowadays are less likely to believe in this superstition.

“When you are pregnant, they say that if you carry low and look like a watermelon, it’s going to be a girl, but if you carry high and round like a ball, it’s going to be a boy.”

My sister, Patti, heard this first from my other older sister, Jennifer, who already had a baby girl. When Patti started showing four years ago when she was twenty six, people started examining the size of her belly and would tell her that she was going to have a boy. Her stomach was very round and did not appear very low.  Patti says that it is a pretty universal conception amongst mothers. People would not bring this topic up unless they are talking about a pregnant woman. When someone becomes pregnant, she starts hearing about all these stories from other people who have already had kids. It even comes from strangers that talk to you because you are pregnant when you are out in public.

This belief is recorded in Popular Beliefs and Superstitions: A Compendium of American Folklore which is a compilation of Newbell Niles Puckett’s folklore collection. It states, “if a pregnant woman carries her baby high, it will be a boy,” but then it also states that “if a woman carries her baby low during pregnancy, it will be a boy.” These conflicting beliefs were collected from women living in Ohio. The same contradicting statements are documented for female babies as well. This demonstrates that many beliefs are held about determining a baby’s sex and that both of them could be both true and false. These statements are most likely all based off of observation, so to some degree, they have truth in them.

All mothers share the common lore of childbirth. With experience, they make observations and come up with conclusions about many different aspects of pregnancy. Using the belly’s size to determine the baby’s sex is only one of the many beliefs. Some women may encounter one type of belly that frequently results in a male baby, while others associate another type of belly with a female. It all depends on the person who is making the conclusions. If an expecting mother hears one type of belief and it ends up being true, then they will most likely share that with other expecting mothers. The odds of being correct are one to two, so there is a high possibility of being correct.

Annotation: Puckett, Newbell Niles. Popular Beliefs and Superstitions: A Compendium of American Folklore. Boston, Massachusetts: G.K. Hall and Company: 1981. p. 27.