Category Archives: Folk speech

The working mule who ate too much

Nationality: American
Age: 82
Occupation: Retired Professor of Pharmaceuticals
Residence: Chapel Hill, NC
Performance Date: 5/2/21
Primary Language: English

Background: The informant was born and raised in Western North Carolina. He has lived in North Carolina his whole life. He wanted to share some Western North Carolina stories. He explained that this is just a silly joke story that “you’d be setting around and talking to folks maybe after game of golf or tennis, you might even be out hunting, having a coke or something and talking and people would throw out things like [this]. Just Western Carolina country humor.”

“A fellow had a mule that was a great worker but he ate too much.  Giving this some thought, the fellow figured the mule was dumb as a rock, so he decided to just cut back on his hay to see what happened.  So he cut the portion in half and mule didn’t seem to notice. Being pleased himself, for the next several weeks he kept reducing the amount of hay.  Finally, just when he got the mule where he could work without eating, the durn fool died.”

This basically just means if it ain’t broke don’t fix it or why try to mess with something good?

Context of the performance: This was explained to me over FaceTime.

While the informant described it as just a silly joke tale, he supposed it had the above meaning. It could also mean that you shouldn’t cut corners, you should do everything fully. The extended metaphor reflects a local attitude and reflects the relationship between culture and folklore, especially as this idea is expressed in a vernacular and metaphor largely exclusive to the region, perhaps demonstrating the historic-geographic method of looking at folklore.

Beggars have conditions – Arabic Jokes

Nationality: Palestinian
Age: 78
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Long Beach
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English, French, Italian

Context:

He heard these two jokes when he was a kid in Jordan. There were many little fruit vendors back then, and there were a lot of beggars back then too.

Joke 1:

“A poor man wants to sell fruits on a cart to make some money. So a beggar came to this guy asking for something from his cart for free. The guy looked at him, and gave him a small watermelon. So the beggar said, ‘The smallest one? I thought you were going to give me a bigger one. You know what, you will teach people to not beg from you.’”

Joke 2:

“A beggar goes to a butcher, and asks for a free piece of meat. The butcher goes and cuts a piece for him. The beggar then responds ‘You’re not going to cook it for me?’”

Thoughts:

I found these jokes funny because they switch out the expected expression of gratitude with the opposite: an expression of ingratitude. Because they occupy the space between the expected and unexpected, they get the listeners’ attention, and strike them as funny. Because these jokes sound similar to the English saying “Beggars aren’t choosers,” they could have been used as a build-up to an equivalent saying in Arabic (or just the English saying).

“I stopped sleeping on your lap”… “You saved me from your farts.” – Arabic Saying and Comeback

Nationality: Jordanian
Age: 41
Occupation: Accounting Manager
Residence: Yorba Linda
Performance Date: 5/3/2021
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English, French

Context:

She learned it from her grandma in Jordan, when she was around 7 or 8. The first time she heard it was when her grandma asked her if she wanted to sleep over, to which she said that she had to go home. Her grandma then said “Rayahtni min fsak” (“You saved me from your farts”).

Text:

Original Script: بطلت انام بحضنك… ريحتني من فساك

Transliteration: Battalt anam bi hodnak… Rayahtni min fsak

Translation: I stopped sleeping on your lap… You saved me from your farts

Thoughts:

I found this saying-response pair really funny, since not many people think of how often children fart while sitting on an adult’s lap. The first part (“Battalt anam bi hodnak”) sounds like it could be swapped out with any declaration of independence that would make the other person upset. The second part (“Rayahtni min fsak”) is a witty response to the declaration that essentially means “You were a burden to me.” The humor of the response makes it easier for the message to get across without sounding rude, since independence can be a touchy subject in a culture where families are tight-knit.

“The monkey in his mom’s eye is a gazelle” – Arabic Proverb

Nationality: Palestinian
Age: 75
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Long Beach
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English, French

Context:

She learned it from her mom and grandma in Jordan. She said that the proverb means that a mom never finds a fault in her child.

Text:

Original Script: القرد بعين امه غزال

Transliteration: El ‘ird bi aine immo ghazal

Literal Translation: The monkey in his mom’s eye is gazelle

Smooth Translation: The monkey in his mom’s eyes is a gazelle

Thoughts:

I found this proverb to be really funny because although I’ve seen moments like what the proverb describes, it’s generally the opposite in my family: it’s usually the aunts and grandmas that see the child as better than they really are, and it’s usually the moms who are quick to tell their children their faults. The background information that one must have to understand the proverb is that monkeys are seen as ugly, but gazelles are seen as beautiful (there are love poems called ghazals because of that connection). Thus, the proverb implies that even if someone is as ugly as a monkey, their mom would see them as beautiful as a gazelle, which comments on the strength of family ties: the love of a mother would gloss over all the child’s faults.

“Them saying ‘coward’ a hundred times is better than them saying ‘God rest his soul.’” – Arabic Proverb

Nationality: Palestinian
Age: 78
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Long Beach
Performance Date: 5/2/2021
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English, French, Italian

Context:

He heard it in Jordan when he was around 15 years old, when he “started volunteering to do risky things.” “If someone wants to do something risky–so that even his life is at risk–his parents would ask him why, to which he would answer ‘they will call me a coward.’ His parents would then tell him this proverb.”

Text:

Original Script: “يقولوا ميت “جبان” ولا يقولوا “الله يرحمو”

Transliteration: Y’oulou meet “jaban” wala y’oulou “Allah yerhamo”

Literal Translation: Them saying hundred “coward” better than them saying “God rest his soul”

Smooth Translation: Them saying “coward” a hundred times is better than them saying “God rest his soul”

Thoughts:

This proverb reminds me of how I was raised, although I heard a similar English proverb (“Better safe than sorry”) much more often than this proverb. Like my informant, I first heard this proverb from my parents when I was a young teenager; they wanted to make sure that my ego would not cause me harm, especially if peer pressure is present. This proverb implies that Arabs generally value well-being over pride.