Category Archives: Signs

Prognostications, fortune-telling, etc.

El Cadejo

Age: 74

Text:

Informant: “When people walk alone in the mountains, farms, where no on else is around on the roads, or if you come home late after being out, if you saw a white dog, it was there to protect you. But, if you saw a black dog, the black dog would look for drunk people on the street and attack them. People who saw black dogs that looked like a spirit, they would run to someone’s house. If it was white, they felt it would protect them.”

Context:

This Nicaraguan legend was told to the informant as a child and teen by their mom and grandma, who lived in Nicaragua. The informant was born and raised in Nicaragua until they moved to the U.S. at 16 years old. People who lived in the mountains or farms and saw a white dog were told that it served as a protection. However, if they saw a black dog and they were drunk, they’d get attacked.

Analysis:

I’ve found that a lot of Nicaraguan legends have an underlying lesson that is meant to be shared to young ones. This particular legend served a functionalist approach because it was likely meant to discourage people from getting drunk. It could also have been told to prevent people from being out alone in the middle of the night. Adding the element of potentially seeing a white dog could give teens a little bit of hope that they were safe on their walk.

Santa Claus

Age: 22

Text:
“I started to really believe in Santa Claus, and I was very adamant about finding him when he came down my chimney. So I brought out my sleeping bag and put it under the tree and tried sleeping the night under my Christmas tree. My parents got really mad at me and told me that he wouldn’t come if I did that. So I reluctantly went back into my room, and just before I fell asleep, I heard a clomping on the shingles of my roof. To this day, I will never forget the sound of the hoofs, and knowing that Santa was about to come down my chimney. I had so many butterflies.”

Context:
A girl from Phoenix discussing a core childhood Christmas memory that she knows is fake but swears is real.

Analysis:
This is a demonstration of myths serving to keep children well behaved. She believed in Santa and wanted to see him so badly in real life, so she brought her sleeping bag under the tree. Since this is a naughty act, what Santa Claus monitors, her parents were able to use that as a ploy to get her to sleep in her bedroom, saying that he would not come at all if she did not sleep in her room. This served to keep the Christmas magic alive and also to maintain good behavior. I wonder what caused the “hooves on the roof” noise.

Eye Twitches

Text: The excerpt below is a folk performance describing a student’s superstitious beliefs about eye twitches.

Interviewer: Do you have any folk beliefs of what brings good or bad luck?

Interviewee: This isn’t good or bad luck, but like, if your eye’s twitching it means that someone is thinking about you, so my mom would always come in my room and be like: “ok, name everyone that you think would be thinking about you, and when it stops, that’s the person that is thinking about you.”

Context:

This conversation came from a discussion with a Forms of Folklore USC student. I inquired about different folk traditions that were related to her Romanian heritage, and she responded with the above excerpt. Her Mom is fully Romanian, and she associated the tradition with Romanian folk beliefs. She engaged with the folk belief when young, with her mother initiating a folk ritual, to use the eye twitches to see who was thinking about the ritual participant.

Analysis:

There exists the folk belief about eye twitches, and also the folk ritual performed by the interviewee and her mother. The sign exists as it gives a sense of control over the insecurity of who is thinking about you. This ritual with the interviewee and her Mother allows the folk participant to gain some control over their insecurity, by being able to see if others think of them. It is interesting how muted the knowledge granted from the ritual is. The behavior gives minimal information, only telling if others are thinking about them, not more useful details, like what that person thinks about the folk participant. This outcome is likely because if the folk belief was believed to portray more details, then someone could verify more accurately whether the sign was true. The ritual has to strike a balance between calming the folk participant, and not being too much more detailed, where it might be proven false.

Black Milk Tea

Text: Below is a performance describing the consumption of black milk tea family ritual.

The Interviewee was asked to recount any folklore or superstitions he remembered.

Interviewee: Another, I guess, family tradition or superstition we have, you can also call it a superstition, like, uh, my Grandpa on my Dad’s side of the family always, he would always make black milk tea, brew, almost boil, these black tea leaves, concentrate it super, super hard, and then, like, add evaporated milk to it, and would alway add two cubes of sugar to it. That was just like his tradition.

Interviewer: And what was that supposed to bring, or, what is the purpose of that?

Interviewee: So, actually, like my Grandpa, and especially, like, my Dad’s side of the family, like, they, uh, suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution in China. I’m not going to go through that, but there’s, like, a whole thing you can look at it. Um, it was also even hard to get black tea leaves during the Cultural Revolution during that time, so like for them, those black tea leaves that they had was, like, almost like sacred to them. Even though now it’s like fifty years later, and, like, that chaotic time is now passed, even I still, like, brew black tea leaves the way my Grandpa used. So, it’s like, I guess it’s like a tradition that, like, I’ve held on to even though he’s passed it on.

Context:

This excerpt is from a conversation with a grad student studying Biology after a MMA (mixed-martial arts) practice. The student was raised in Walnut, California, and has parents that are Chinese immigrants. Currently, the ritual consumption of black milk tea is performed by his father and grandfather whenever they want to bring about good luck, but historically, during the Cultural Revolution in China, it was performed rarely, only every once in a while, when they could find black tea leaves, living in extreme poverty.

Analysis:

This example illustrates how tradition can endure as context and place change. The original habit of consuming black milk tea was informed by extreme poverty, where the consumption of the tea’s ingredients could only happen rarely due to the circumstances of famine. Now, the tradition endures as a ritual consumption of the black milk teas, to recall that time in the past, and signify the surviving that took place. The original creation of this black milk tea could only happen when interviewee’s father and grandfather were lucky enough to find the ingredients, so now, even though the ingredients now take no luck to find, the tradition has held on to that feeling, as it now conveys good luck and fortune.

Even VS Odd Flowers

Text: The excerpt below is a performance describing the even vs odd flowers Romanian superstition.

Interviewer: Do you have any folk beliefs of what brings good or bad luck?

Interviewee: And, so like, I brought this up in class on Tuesday, but it’s the, uh, when you bring someone flowers, if it’s an even number, that’s bad luck, because you only bring even numbers to funerals, when you are mourning someone, in Romanian culture, so you’ll always bring odd flowers [when going to an event that is happy].

Interviewer: Do you know where you heard of these beliefs?

Interviewee: Yeah, they’re from my parents, it’s part of the culture, it’s like a very superstitious culture.

Context:

This excerpt is from a conversation during a discussion class of Forms of Folklore. The person interviewed is of Romanian heritage, and grew up in America. They always bring an even number of flowers to funerals, and an odd number to joyous events.

Analysis:

This belief likely is held because the believer likes to feel greater influence over events that they do not affect. The superstition also points to the multiple, competing symbolic meanings of flowers, how flowers are given joyfully to someone you love, but also, they are used to mourn for those who die. These competing use cases resulted in this belief forming, where which circumstance of flowers had to be made clear. It is also interesting how odd is considered lucky, while even is considered unlucky. This folkloric belief, in its focus on odd and even, is extremely similar to and possibly connected to the pulling petals folk activity, where depending on if the number of petals pulled is odd or even, someone does or does not love the ritual performer. Also, the fact that odd in particular is joyful, while even is somber, could have arose from the fact that giving one flower is common, and it would be strange from that to be classified as unlucky, so from there, all odds were made happy, and evens were made unlucky.