Category Archives: Customs

Customs, conventions, and traditions of a group

Throwing of Bouquet by the Bride

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: February 11th, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background Information:

My informant is a 22-year-old student, originally from the Southern New Jersey area. We recently got talking about weddings and we were discussing the American custom of the bride throwing her bouquet behind her after she has been married. This is not a common custom where I am from, and so I was intrigued to hear what she made of it, considering it is so prevalent in American film and television. She has seen this tradition in real life many times, and thinks it is a fun part of the wedding ceremony. She is signified in this conversation by the initials B.I.

Main Piece:

A: Have you personally seen someone throw a bouquet at a wedding?

B.I.: Yes, I’ve seen it many times. It’s always the bride that throws the bouquet of flowers that she carried up the aisle with her, so usually white roses or the like.

A: And when exactly does this take place in the ceremony?

B.I.: It normally takes place after the actual marriage itself, but sometimes I’ve seen brides throw their bouquets the second they get outside the church, and other times they wait until later on in the evening when everyone is gathered, perhaps at the reception or after the dinner, and then she throws it. It’s always thrown back over her head, so she can’t see who she’s throwing it to. Oh, and also it’s really important who tries to catch it. It’s always unmarried women who try and catch it, sometimes the bridesmaids in particular. Sometimes one of the men will try and catch it for a joke. If you catch it, it means you’re the next person to get married out of the group. I don’t know how seriously people take it as a prediction of who will actually get married next, but I’ve certainly seen some exceptionally uncomfortable men around after their girlfriend catches the bouquet!

A: And why does she throw it in the first place?

B.I.: I don’t really know to be honest, is it something to do with throwing away your virginity or something? Because flowers usually represent that, right? Yeah, and that would work well with the fact that the flowers are white, because white is the traditional color you wear at a wedding to represent your virginity.

Performance Context:

This piece was related to me in person in a conversation about American superstitions and customs including those from the natural world, such as Bigfoot, and from film and television.

My Thoughts:

This piece highlights a lot of preconceptions of the newly married woman. Firstly, that she throws a bouquet of white flowers is certainly symbolic of virginity, and the casting aside of virginal white and maidenhood to become a married and sexually active woman. This would concur with Vaz da Silva’s constructions of the ‘tricolor’ of womanhood, that white, red, and black represent the stages in a woman’s life, passing from white virginity, to red sexual activity, to black barrenness. Secondly, the act of throwing the bouquet itself is a kind of symbolic ‘deflowering,’ that the era of her girlhood has passed and she is now almost a full member of adult female society. By passing it onto another woman, she passes on the torch of her virginity, only for that woman in turn to throw her own bouquet at her wedding. This is underscored in the idea that the only women who try and catch the flowers are unmarried, as otherwise that would suggest a refusal of the classic contract of marriage in outdated terms: the person you are sanctioned to have sex with. If a married woman caught the bouquet, it would therefore suggest a critical insufficiency in their marriage. It is interesting that this tradition carries on today despite the fact that many women must have no idea behind the symbolism of what they are doing – certainly it was news to me. It reminds me of the American tradition of throwing one’s graduation cap into the air at the end of the graduation ceremony – an eschewing of one’s previous identity and entering into a new stage of one’s life.

Wren Day

Nationality: Irish
Age: 54
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Dublin, Ireland
Performance Date: March 1st, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Irish

Background Information:

Informant is 54-year-old woman living in Dublin, Ireland. She was raised in rural southern Ireland. This festival called Wren Day is celebrated on St. Stephen’s Day, December 26th. It is not a custom I have observed in Dublin, and seems to mainly be confined to rural areas, particularly in the south but it has also been seen in the Nordic countries. Wren in this tale is pronounced like “wran,” owing to the southern dialect. She learned of this festival from experiencing it, and she didn’t particularly enjoy it as she found the costumes scary. She is signified in this conversation by the initials C.D.

Main Piece:

C.D.: Wren Day is always celebrated on St. Stephen’s Day at home. It’s not so much a festival that everyone celebrates, rather there are a few people that celebrate it and try and drag the rest of us into it. It involves men, usually, dressing up in straw outfits and masks and parading through the town singing songs. Back home, they’d work their way around the mountain and would knock on your door and sing a song – sometimes it had words, and other times it was just sounds, like the Native American chants – and they’d expect a penny in return. I always thought they were terrifying, dressed up like giant haybales and shouting in the front garden. In the village there would be a kind of parade, where the marchers would hold up these long wooden poles with nets on the top, that was supposed to symbolize the catching of the wren. I think they used to actually catch a wren sometimes, but maybe that’s gone out of fashion over time.

A: Do you know what the wren symbolized?

C.D.: It was meant to symbolize the old year being put away and the new year coming in. You’d only find the wren in winter, so by caging it and putting control on it the people are sort of forcing in the spring, maybe like a Groundhog Day style thing?

A: And do you remember the kinds of songs they’d sing?

C.D.: Like I said, I was usually too scared of them to really listen to what they were saying, but when they’d come to the house they’d end their songs in “If you haven’t got a penny then a hapenny will do,/ If you haven’t got a hapenny then God bless you!” That’s usually when my mam would hand them a penny or two, as they wouldn’t go away until you gave it to them.

Performance Context:

This piece of folklore was related to me over the phone, as I am in California and she is in Ireland. I asked her about any festivals she had at home and she said that this was the strangest one she could think of that she actually experienced.

My Thoughts:

The wren is an interesting bird, as it is found in both the Catholic and Celtic traditions. In the Celtic tradition, the wren was a sacred bird that sang through the winter. In this sense, it symbolized enduring life through the harshest months. By sacrificing a wren at this time of year, the people ritualistically “killed” winter and ushered in the path for the spring birds. In the Christian tradition, the wren is thought to have betrayed St. Stephen, revealing his position whilst he hid from his enemies. This allowed for the tradition to endure through pre-Christian times until now, and explains the current dating of this festival to St. Stephen’s Day. This festival, then, projects the human and religious calendars onto the natural year cycle by eliminating winter and ushering in the Spring. Also, the idea that it is mostly men that participate in it speaks to the Catholic patriarchy in Ireland at the time that this tradition was prevalent.

Bob-Apple

Nationality: Irish
Age: 58
Occupation: Homemaker
Residence: Kerry, Ireland
Performance Date: April 1st, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Irish

Background Information:

My informant is my aunt from rural Ireland. She related to me a tradition common in Kerry in particular, but spread out over time, called bob-apple or swing-apple. As a child, I also partook in these games, common around Halloween time, which involved either bobbing one’s head in a basin of water to try and catch an apple with your teeth, or tying an apple to a string and hanging it so that you had to try and bite it, both without using your hands. She learned this from experience in school, and has passed the tradition down to her children. For her, it is one of the fondest memories of her childhood.She is signified in this conversation by the initials J.O.

Main Piece:

J.O.: So both of these games were things we’d play around Halloweentime, I’ve never heard them played at any other time of year, and I think it’d feel fierce strange to have it at any other time. So on the last day of primary school before the Halloween break, when you’d get a week off school, the teacher would bring in a load of apples and some basins and sometimes string. And what he’d do is fill up one of the basins with freezing cold water and then put one apple for each student into it, so they’d float on the water.

A: Did the water have to be cold?

J.O.: Yes, that was part of the fright of the whole thing that it was freezing, and it’d be harder for you to catch your breath between bobs. Then what the teacher would do is to put each child’s name into a hat and pick people out one by one to bob for apples. And then when he’d call someone you’d have to put on a blindfold and keep your hands behind your back and try and fish for the apples with your face. And you’d want to go fairly early on when there were loads of apples as they’d be easier to get, and you could corner one easier. The later it got, the more the apples could float around and it’d be harder to get a grip on one. The last few people were absolutely hilarious, though, as it could go on for a good ten or fifteen minutes just watching them root around in the water for an apple. If you were taking too long or the day was almost over the teacher might guide the apple over to you with a stick, but that was funnier sometimes as the person with the blindfold wouldn’t know the apple was coming and it could hit them in the face. The audience could tell you whether you were hot or cold, too, hot being closer to the apple and cold being further away. At the end you were allowed to keep the apple, which was a luxury as the only time we got apples was when we robbed them from  neighbor’s orchard, but I heard the rich people would put sixpence in some of them. That was another variation of the game, actually, but they were mostly Dublin people so they had more money. The teacher would also bring in a box of sweets and you could have two, so it was probably the best day of the year at school.

A: And you mentioned a variation earlier, called swing-apple?

J.O.: Yes swing-apple! The premise was pretty much the same, but what would happen was the teacher would set up an apple swinging from a rope from one of the beams of the ceiling, and he’s call on people to try and get it with their teeth without using their hands, and they were blindfolded again. The first person to take a bite was allowed to keep the apple. Looking back, it was a breeding ground for germs and the like, but I suppose they were the times.

Performance Context:

This piece of folklore was related to me over FaceTime, as my aunt is in Kerry and I am in California.

My thoughts:

Firstly, apples have long been associated with Halloween when we consider other traditions such as caramel apples, traditionally only eaten at Halloween. There is also an element of practical joke in this, as the people who have to go last are the butts of the joke, but there is no harm in it. The idea of Halloween as a liminal space between dead and living, and when a lot of societal rules are broken, such as the idea of actually ‘taking candy from a stranger’ by trick-or-treating, plays into the bob-apple tradition as you would not normally be sanctioned to skip classes in favor of a game, especially one that made a joke out of the last few people. Therefore, the setting of the performance is important, as well as the time of year. That the participants are children also suggests that Halloween has, over time, become more of a children’s holiday, especially with the tradition of trick-or-treating.

Walking on the Grass at Spelman College

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 1st, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background Info:

My informant is a 20-year-old domestic exchange student at the University of Southern California, from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. All universities have some kind of folklore surrounding them, both individually and on the level of the university system in general, such as the ‘hook-hand’ legend. This one in particular was learned by my informant during her orientation week at Spelman, and she has been an active bearer in not only following this ‘rule’, but passing it on to new students.

Main Piece:

Spelman College is an historically black women’s four-year liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. The particular superstition I collected about this college is that Spelman students do not walk on the grass. This seems to have stemmed from a prohibition on walking on the grass for aesthetic reasons, as not to trample it. Firstly, the superstition suggests that the person who walks on the grass will not graduate on time, if at all. There are similar superstitions to this all over the world, for example in the University of Dublin, Trinity College, it is considered bad luck for the bell to toll while you are walking under the campanile, as it is believed that you will fail your exams. It is therefore traditional for people to stand under it when they graduate, as they have no more exams to do. In Spelman, however there is a saying that has grown up around this grass superstition – that “Spelman women do not cut corners.” Therefore, a kind of metafolklore has developed around this original folklore, which encompasses the values of the college and makes a didactic lesson out of a botanical necessity.

My thoughts:

This was the first and only piece of metafolklore I collected. This was interesting as it was suggestive of both the amount of people who actually abided by this rule not to walk on the grass, and in it’s metafolkloric form, encapsulated the community feel to the college and the dedication and intelligence of those in attendance. It is also interesting that this kind of folklore, a prohibition on walking somewhere, exists in many different universities across the globe, and emphasizes the college system as a hotbed of folklore. It also distinguishes one as an in-member of the community if they are to avoid walking on the grass, and therefore acts as a kind of initiation rite into a new community.

For the oikotype of this legend from Trinity College Dublin: http://campus.ie/surviving-college/college-life/5-best-trinity-college-myths-are-probably-true

Duanwu Festival

Nationality: Chinese
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: U.S.
Performance Date: March 18, 2017
Primary Language: English

This friend of mine heard I was finding people to collect folklore and decided to help. He came up with several origins of traditional Chinese festivals. For this particular festival, he said he learned it from his middle school teacher when they were studying a poem the protagonist wrote in literature class. 

Story:

”

During the Spring and Autumn Period in China history, there is a patriotic poet called Qu Yuan from the Country of Chu.  In 229 BC., Country Qin invaded eight cities of Chu, but then invited King of Chu to Qin to make a peace treaty. Believing this is King of Qin’s scheme, Qu Yuan tried to reason with King of Chu, but only irritated the king and got himself exiled. King of Chu accepted the offer and did went to Qin, but as soon as he got there he was held in captive. King of Chu was full of regret and worry, and died three years later in Qin. After he died, Qin continued to invade Chu, and finally seize the capital. During Qu Yuan’s exile, he heard of the death of the King and the news that the capital was seized, he realized his country no long exists. Depressed, he drowned himself in the river. The day he committed suicide later became the day of Duanwu.

After Qu Yuan’s death, the used-to-be citizen of Chu were touched and full of grief. They went to the river to mourn over Qu Yuan. Fishermen rowed the boat on the river over and over again hoping to find his body but all failed. Someone then threw the rice rolls and other food into the river, hoping these food was enough for the fish in the river so they would not hurt Qu Yuan’s body. Everyone else followed him and began to threw food in the river. Every year of this day people continued to do that in memory of Qu Yuan, and these activity gradually became the Duanwu Festival’s traditions today —  eating the special rice roll Zongzi and rowing Dragon boat.

”

Thoughts:

Duanwu Festival is one of the most important traditional festivals in China. It does not mean much for me, except that this is the day we would eat a special and delicious food meant for this day only, called Zongzi (made of sticky rice and various other ingredients of your choice, served in a plant’s leaf). I kinda know this festival is originally held in memory of Qu Yuan but never know why. This is educational.