Category Archives: Folk speech

Wig Snatching

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Minneapolis
Performance Date: April 21, 2019
Primary Language: English

In LGBT+ communities saying someone or something “snatched your wig” means you’re shocked by whatever happened. It comes from a drag performances where sometimes in more dramatic moments drag queens will literally take off another queen’s wig. Sometimes there can be another wig under the wig, making the whole event entirely premeditated spectacle, but usually the queen whose wig is pulled isn’t prepared and they have their actual hair revealed by the wig snatch.

This particular lingo speaks to the in-grouping found in LGBT+ communities. It’s a phrase referring to a specific act in a genre of show specifically produced, performed, and attended by a mostly LGBT+ folk group. The internet has spread the phrase around to become more mainstream but the nature of its origins shows how insular the environment it came about in was. The exact syntax is also flexible, with all sorts of small variations from “My wig? Snatched!” to sometimes just “Wig,” which makes sense given the LGBT+ communities general position as pioneers of evolving “archaic” language such as gendered pronouns.

Awkward Silences are Called Tumbleweeds

Z is the informant, L is interviewer

Main Piece

Z: So in Texas, when there’s an akward silence or an awkward moment, we call it a tumbleweed.

 

L: So when a tumbleweed happens, what do you do?

 

Z: We don’t really call it a tumbleweed until after it’s happened. Like if we’re referencing a different awkward moment we’ll be like “oh that was a tumbleweed.” Now that I think about it, that’s so southern, oh my god. But yeah, it would be very weird if an awkward silence was happening and someone was just like, “oh this is a tumbleweed.” Like, it’s never a thing that’s mentioned at the time, it’s always in reference to it.

 

L: Do you know why?

 

Z: I think it had something to do with the fact that before the cowboys did their gun-dueling thing, like when they paused and waited to like, do the thing, there would be like, a tumbleweed that went by in the movies. I think that’s where it came from. It’s very Texan.

 

Background

The informant is from Dallas, Texas.

 

Nationality: American

 

Location: Los Angeles, CA

 

Context

I asked if she had any very Texan folklore

 

Notes

This story reminded me a lot of “awkward turtle” from back in grade school. I think there’s folklore surrounding awkwardness in social interactions because we evolved as social beings. Without social interactions, we would quite literally die, so anything that implies poor social standing or interactions, such as an awkward silence, feels intimidating. Being able to break the tension with shared folklore is a great way to counteract the negative social effects.

 

Italian Folk Saying

Nationality: Irish and Italian
Age: 65
Occupation: Retired School Teacher
Residence: Los Altos, California
Performance Date: March 2019
Primary Language: English

The following folk belief is a saying that my family friend G often heard from her mother in 1950s-60s San Francisco. Her mother was an Irish woman but G believes this is an Italian and global saying.

Text: It’s amazing that 1 mother can take care of 8 children but 8 children can’t take care of 1 mother.

Context: G told me this folksaying when I was meeting her for coffee, asking her about folklore she has heard. G described that this was a common saying in Italian and Irish families in San Francisco. G emphasises that she believes this folklore describes how a mother always takes care of her children and does anything for them while they are growing up. She is always there for her children when they need her throughout their lives. However, when a mother needs help, which is most often the occurrence towards the end of her life, all her children are absent. The children always claim they are to busy, have to work, or don’t have enough money to take care of the mother. G also said that throughout her lifetime, she has seen this folk saying come to fruition many times, and often see mothers be ignored or not given enough attention when they need help from their children.

Analysis: I think G’s interpretation of this folklore is completely accurate. This folk saying is clearly representing the belief that mothers should be cared for later in life, and often aren’t by their children. It demonstrates how our society is obsessed with wealth and capitalism, and not focused enough on family. Often times people don’t want to take care of their mothers later in life because it might limit the advancement of their careers. Another aspect of the folk belief is that it seems to personify older women to be in needing of care, which could show small sexism in society, as it is assumed that older men don’t need any help or resist it. However I do not belief that there is any true meaning to be sexist in this folksaying. In my research of this folk belief however, I found it interesting that this folk belief also occurrs in other cultures throughout the world, and exists in Muslim culture as well. Showing the importance of mothers throughout the world and the belief that children often neglect their mothers as they get older. Why this particular folk saying names 8 children, and others I found online have differing numbers of children, seems to be arbitrary and there is no meaning behind the specific number of children.

Swimming Folk belief

Age: 19
Occupation: University Student
Residence: Columbus, Ohio
Performance Date: April 2019
Primary Language: English

The following folksaying was collected by my friend J. J is 19 years old and from Ohio.

J: My mom would always jokingly tell me “Don’t swim an hour after after you eat.”

Context: J told me that his family has a lake house and they often go swimming in the summer. His mom has told him this, but nobody in J’s family actually believes it, including his mom who told J this. J says that the belief behind this saying is that after you eat, all your blood and energy goes to your stomach, and your arms and legs therefore lose blood and energy to keep you up if you are swimming. J says that it is logical, but in his experience, he sees no difference in his swimming abilities before and after he eats. J says his mom told him this because she thought it was an interesting belief and wanted to share it with J, but didn’t believe in it and never prohibited J from swimming after he ate. J told me this folk saying in a group and it delved the group into a conversation as to whether this folk saying has any truth to it.

Analysis: This is a common folk saying that I too have heard in my lifetime. I have never heard of anyone following this folk saying however, and J felt the same way. It is surprising to me that this folksaying has survived for as long as it has, considering there seems to very few people who follow it.  It shows how people like to share information and beliefs they have heard, even if they don’t believe in it, as it can start an interesting conversation. It also shows that folk sayings are reliant on logic, not on science.

Proverb for How to Approach Different Kinds of Bears

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/27/2019
Primary Language: English
Language: German

[The subject is MSt. Her words are bolded, mine are not.]

MSt: If it’s black, attack; if it’s brown, lie down; if it’s white, good night.

ME: Could you explain that for me?

MSt: Alright, so when you’re, like, in the backcountry, you see a bear, there’s different, like, responses that you should have depending on the type of bear, so if it’s black, attack; brown, lie down; uh, white, good night. So black bears are easily scared… One time I, like, there was a black bear- a black bear kind of came into my campsite and was like, rustling around, scaring everybody, but we were just, like, real loud that night, and we all sang into the campfire, and like, we scared it away.

ME: So black means you attack.

MSt: Black means you attack. ‘Cause they’re scared of humans. So they mostly just don’t want the trouble. Like, any bear’s gonna get between you and their cub, but pretty much, like, black bears don’t want the fight. They just wanna, like, live their own life. Which, retweet.

Brown bears: brown, lie down. So brown bears, grizzlies, will attack you, but only if, like, you’re interesting to them. So just, like, lay down, try to make yourself small, like, be very clear that you’re not gonna try to attack them, ‘cause they will fight you and they will win. Play dead, because you will most likely die if you see a grizzly bear, but there’s a chance you won’t if you just, like, play dead.
And then white is good night, because, like, if you see a polar bear you’re fucked.

Context: MSt is one of my suitemates, and a sophomore student in college. She was born in Germany and moved to Michigan when she was five years old, where she grew up and lived until coming to USC. German was her first language, and though she still understands it she has forgotten how to speak fluently and now considers English her primary language. She has always been interested in hiking, camping, and spending time outdoors. In the middle of a conversation about our favorite deadly animals, I mentioned polar bears and she recited the proverb above, which I then asked her to explain. She told me that she had heard it from a teacher on a high school camping trip after they saw a brown bear pawing at one of the tents and scared it off by blowing whistles and loudly singing songs.

Thoughts: The reason MSt saying this stuck out to me in the middle of our conversation was that growing up, I always knew that there were different ways you were supposed to react depending on the type of bear you ran into, but I had no way of remembering what there were. This was the first time I had heard something like “leaves of three, let it be” (a proverb about avoiding poison ivy) that applied to bears, and it feels like something I should have learned growing up. I can see it being spread very easily from person to person because in addition to being short, catchy, and easy to remember, it is actually helpful to know if you’re in a situation where you might encounter a bear, and besides that, the last third of it is funny. It makes sense as a proverb that an authority/mentor figure would tell a student (which is how MSt first heard it), but also as something kids could say to one another for fun in a relevant conversation (which is how I first heard it).