Category Archives: Folk speech

Spanish Proverb

Nationality: Cuban
Age: 67
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: March 15, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Subject: Proverb

 

Informant: I asked my dad, Jose Oti, if he knew any proverbs that were important to him or that he grew up with. He was born in Cuba in the fifties and moved to the United States when he was eleven. When he immigrated to the U.S., he had to escape without the government finding out he and his family were trying to move out for good. Because of this, his parents told him to take his little brother and his little sister and go to the United States alone, and they would come meet them in Miami later. As a result, he was forced to grow up fast, in a sense, and learn not to make mistakes. When I asked him if any proverbs came to mind, he responded,

 

“There’s a saying in Spanish that translates to ‘it’s better to be alone than in bad company.’”

 

The phrase is a common saying in the Spanish language in general, but my family got it from Cuba, where their extended family and friends of the family said the saying regularly. He said his parents started saying it to him more often when they had all moved and settled in the U.S. Since he had never spoken English before arriving in the United States, he was held back a few grades in school, and had to work extra hard to become fluent enough in English so that he could do well enough in school and skip a few grades to catch up with the kids that were his age. Therefore, he could definitely not afford to get into significant trouble that would set him back. His parents stressed this to him with the proverb, and whenever they thought he was hanging around with kids from school who might be a bad influence on him, they would repeat in the original Spanish,

 

“Mejor solo que mal acompnañado(a).”

 

I’ve heard the proverb many times from my dad before, growing up, but as it is a phrase said as advice or as a scolding, usually from a parent to their child when the child has gotten into trouble, I never really took it to heart or thought about what it actually meant. When I asked my dad where he had first heard it from, he told me, “I learned it from Abuelo and Abuela [or, “dad and mom”] when they thought I might be hanging around with kids who may get me into trouble.”

Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: March 13, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky

 

 

Subject: Childhood Game

 

 

Informant: Natalie Thurman

 

 

Background Information/Context: Natalie used to play this game called “Down by the Banks of the Hanky Panky” when she was younger with her friends.

 

The following is Natalie’s description of the game to me:

 

 

 

“I used to play this one all the time with my friends. We would all sit around in a circle, close, so that your knees are touching—you would sit criss-cross. And you would put your hands on the knees of the people sitting next to you, palms up. The hand on the knee of the person to your right would be over the hand of that person. The hand on the knee of the person to your left would be under the hand of that person. I feel like that was really confusing—did you understand that? [I say yes.] Ok good. So you have your hands like that—oh my God, this is giving me so many flashbacks—and you start the game. You all start singing the song. It goes like this: [singing]

 

 

Down by the banks of the hanky panky

Where the bullfrogs jump from bank to banky

Singing oops, opps, curly pops

Snap crack-a-doodle and a cur-plop

 

 

And while you’re singing it, you bring your left hand, that’s resting on the hand of the person on your left, over their knee—you bring that left hand over to your right side and slap the hand of the person on your right, whose hand is resting on your right hand, which is resting on their left knee, if that makes sense. And you try to go with the rhythm, but towards the end, everyone ends up going as fast as they can so that it doesn’t land on you.

 

 

So when the song ends, and you say cur-plop, on ‘plop,’ whosever hand is the last one to be slapped is out, and they’re removed from the circle. Then you just keep going until you get to the last person, and they win the game. It gets really intense though when there’s less and less people. Like, when it gets down to the last two people, it’s so intense, everyone’s energy goes up like times ten. It was really fun.”

 

 

When Natalie first started describing the game to me, I immediately knew what she was talking about. I also played this game often with my friends when I was little, but I had completely forgotten about it until she brought it back up. It was particularly interesting to me to hear her actually tell me the lyrics of the song because I remember being a kid and not knowing the exact words that we were supposed to say, so instead, I would just make something up that sort of sounded like what everyone else was saying. I wonder if Natalie did the same thing, or if she told me the lyrics of a version of the song that she and her friends consistently used. It was also humorous for me to watch her try to explain the circle formation, as I could tell how difficult it was to explain in words. I think it’s a game that is much better suited as oral and performance folklore instead of for writing down how the game works. Because of this, the game doesn’t have official instructions, and can change slightly each time someone introduces it to a new set of friends.

Egg Ritual

Nationality: American
Age: 24
Occupation: Entrepreneur
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: March 16, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

 

Subject: Ritual, Superstition

 

Informant: Tye Griffith

 

Background Information/Context: Growing up, I had a nanny who helped raise me, and who had been working in my family since before I was born. Her name is Eva, and she is from Monterrey, Mexico. Eva also worked as a nanny for a close family friend of mine, Tye. Tye and I essentially grew up together, and had the connection of Eva, who I feel linked our two families together even closer. Recently, I was remembering how when I was little and my parents would be either out to dinner or on vacation, Eva would stay with me. But when it was my bedtime, Eva had a very specific ritual she would perform while tucking me into bed. I didn’t remember the specific details of the ritual, other than it involved an egg that she would hover over my head and recite some sort of prayer. I reached out to Tye, knowing that Eva had done this same ritual with her when she was also younger.

 

This was Tye’s memory of the egg ritual:

 

Tye: Eva would get an egg from the fridge downstairs and rub the egg in different patterns across the body while saying a bunch of prayers. And then she would crack it into a clear glass and put it under the bed. The egg would stay there all night while you slept, and in the morning, you would check the bowl, and it would be completely black inside the bowl. Like a black goop. Ew, that sounds really gross when you say it out loud [laughs]. But it would be black in the morning because of all the bad spirits that came out of your body during the night.

 

And then you had to throw the egg out onto the street in the morning. The room wouldn’t smell though.

 

Me: Wait, would the whole room not smell like a rotten egg in the morning? [laughs] How is that even possible?

 

Tye: Magic! [laughs].

 

Conclusion: I was happy that Tye remembered a little more about it than I did, and having her tell me what she knew really jogged my memory. I was still curious about what Eva was saying during the ritual, so I thought about it for a while. I finally remembered a line from the prayer she recited: “Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo.” So, I Googled that one line, and as it turns out, that was the first line to a Spanish prayer called “El Santo Rosario.” I read the prayer online, and it all came back to me. Eva would have me say the prayer every night when she was with me. The whole prayer reads,

 

Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo,

Santificado sea tu nombre;

Venga a nosotros tu reino;

Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra,

Como en el cielo.

Danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día;

Perdona nuestras ofensas,

Como también nosotros perdonamos a los que ofenden;

No nos dejes caer en la tentación,

Y líbranos del mal.

Amén.[1]

 

The text of this prayer comes from an excerpt from the book Oración del Enfermo. However, in this book, the prayer is referred to as “Padrenuestro,” instead of “El Santo Rosario,” but it is the same text as the Santo Rosario prayer. Upon further reflection, this prayer is actually the Spanish version of The Lord’s Prayer, but I never connected the two, as I did not grow up in a particularly religious household. The only significant religious practices that I grew up with came from Eva, which were all in the Spanish language. I knew of The Lord’s Prayer in English, but I never made the connection until now, because the Spanish version was so much more prevalent in my life.

 

[1] Cadena, Alvaro Jiménez. La Oración del Enfermo: ¡Señor, tu Amigo está Enfermo! Bogotá: Ediciones Paulinas, 1991. Print.

 

 

“What-a To Do”

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Houston, TX
Performance Date: April 5, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Subject: Game, Song

 

Informant: Natalie Thurman

 

Background Information/Context: Natalie, like me, is a theatre major. I asked her if she had any theatre games or warm-up activities at school, and she thought of this one:

 

“There was this theatre exercise we used to do at my high school called ‘what-a to do.’ We would just do it before rehearsal or before shows to warm up our voices and articulation. It was just like a little song that went:

 

What a to do to die today

At a minute or two to two

A thing distinctly hard to say

But harder still to do

For they’ll beat a tattoo at two to two

A rat-a-ta-rat-a-ta-ta-ta-ta-too

And the dragon will come

When he hears the drum

At a minute or two to two today

At a minute or two to two.

 

I had never really thought about what we were saying because we focused so much on our articulation, because that’s what we used it for—as a warm-up. But when I got to college, we used it in one of my acting classes in a completely different context. We had to build a story around it. And we talked about the text in class and, like, what it was actually saying. It’s a children’s nursery rhyme, but it’s one of those nursery rhymes that’s like super dark, like ring around the rosy.

 

It’s about a soldier going to war for the first time, and at the beginning of it, it takes place on the battlefield, right before the two armies are about to charge at each other, and he’s really scared and knows he’s going to die in a few minutes—‘at a minute or two to 2:00. And then the ‘tattoo’ is a drum that the drummer person beats, signaling the charge forward. And then right after that is the climax of it. And then when it ends, the soldier looks around him and sees that everyone has died but him, and he’s the last one standing. But like all of his friends are dead around him. Wow, that was really dark, sorry! But yeah, really different from using it as a warm-up.

 

Lessons in Friends

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 74
Occupation: Retired
Residence: Sunnyside, WA
Performance Date: 3/20/17
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

LW is a retired 74-year-old woman who lives with her husband in Sunnyside, WA. She was born and raised there and came from an immigrant mother and father who came from Guadalajara, Mexico. She never went to college but became a mother to three children and a grandmother to several grandchildren. She was remarried twice and worked two minimum wage jobs to support her family. Her primary language is Spanish but her English is perfect as well.

Are there any saying you have learned that you have passed down or that were passed to you?

LW: My mother used to be big on the fact that my friends were a direct reflection of me and that they would tell her a lot about the kind of person I was so she used to always say to me in Spanish, ‘Dime con quien andas y te digo quien eres’. That saying basically means, show me who your friends are and that will show me who you are.

Do you think she learned it from anywhere or did she invent that saying herself?

LW: I am not sure if she got it from anywhere but I also don’t think she came up with it all by herself. I mean, the philosophy behind it was something she may have come up with on her own in order to teach me a lesson about making friends with trouble-makers. I have passed it on to my own children in order to teach them the same lesson my mom taught me, because it really is true that the friends you pick are a direct reflection of who you are and how other people will perceive you.

Analysis:

It is common to pass on saying from family member to family member that teach a lesson. The particular lesson of this saying was very important to the heritage of this family and continues to be passed down from generation to generation. Although the lesson is widely known, the direct saying may not be. This piece of folklore could easily die out if it is not passed on from the previous generation, but the lesson is the one thing that will live on.