Category Archives: Proverbs

Before the devil knows you’re dead (Irish saying)

Nationality: American / Irish
Age: 56
Occupation: Artist
Residence: Malibu, CA
Performance Date: 4/27/16
Primary Language: English

PP: The Irish have so many sayings, proverbs, stories, myths, stuff like that. A lot of them are about death. It’s a very death centered culture, but they don’t look at it as necessarily a bad thing, it’s more about a celebration of the person’s life. That’s why they have parties at wakes instead of all mourning, and they sometimes give the body a cigar or whiskey. So a lot of the sayings they have are about the afterlife. It’s also because they’re mostly Catholic, or at least used to be and that sticks in the culture too.

TK: What’s an example of a saying about death?

PP: It’s something like, “May you be in heaven an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.” If you think about that one it seems to be referencing the Catholic belief that heaven and hell are both outcomes after you die and that even if you were destined to go to heaven there’s a possibility the devil could grab you anyway. So if you get to heaven safely and then he finds out then it won’t matter.

TK: Did you hear this a lot growing up in Ireland?

PP: I think actually I heard it more in America. We [Ireland] had a big tourism industry, it was called the Celtic Tiger, and people would come over and learn about our folklore, our myths and stuff like that and it became really popular in America for a while. So a lot of the “Irish blessings” along with the stereotypes about Irish people that we have here in America are kind of exaggerated, it was a way for Irish people to sell their way of life to tourists, and part of that was exaggerating their interest in death, or their interest in alcohol, or any of those stereotypes.

TK: But there is some truth to the death ones.

PP: I think so. When I was growing up we were a very religious family. It was sad when someone would die but we also celebrated the good times we had with that person and we knew we were going to see them again in heaven so it was never like a final thing.

 

THE INFORMANT: The informant is a middle-aged woman who spent most of her adolescence and college career in Ireland and has since emigrated to America. She is very fond of the old Irish traditions and proud of the rich cultural heritage of her home country. She does admit that Ireland can be an overly tight-knit place and is unwelcoming to outsiders, and the main reason she left for America was a sense of feeling restless and slightly unwelcome due to the fact that she was not born in Ireland (even though her whole family is from there, she was born in South Africa).

ANALYSIS: This is a very well-known saying whose origins are not readily apparent. As the informant noted, much of Irish culture has been appropriated or exaggerated for an American audience, who generally associate Ireland with leprechauns, fairies, beer, potatoes…cultural touchstones that do not truly represent the full extent of Ireland’s history or contemporary present. Research suggests that this blessing does indeed have very strong ties to the Catholic religion. Traditionally, it was said that (especially for those who did not get a chance to make a confession before their death) the devil would make a last-minute attempt to have a dying person renounce their belief in God and join him instead in Hell. This blessing was meant to be a way of protecting someone from the devil’s preying on them in this way. The “hour” is usually a “half-hour,” which shows the traditional Irish wit: technically, if such a thing were necessary it could happen in an instant but the “half-hour” is unnecessarily long just to make fully sure that the dead soul makes it up to heaven long before the devil is even aware they could possibly be turned to his side.

No Friends on a Powder Day

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Lafayette, Pennyslvania
Performance Date: 3/24/16
Primary Language: English

Information on the Informant: Troy Dixon, the informant of this particular saying, is a 20 year old student who attends Lafayette college in Pennsylvania. He plays college football there and is a linebacker. Troy grew up in Santa Monica, California and attended high school in Los Angeles. Ever since he was born, Troy was an avid skier. He went up with his family to their house in Mammoth every week that was possible during the winter. Because he skied so often he became extremely skilled and became a member of the Mammoth mountain ski team. This only lasted for a few years, however, because it was such a large time commitment. However, Troy has remained an expert skier who frequently travels around California skiing the tallest and fastest mountain. This particular proverb was something he introduced to me numerous times since I met him in 2012 and something he frequently told me while we were on the mountain together.

Me: “What exactly is the proverb that you always say when you’re on the mountain and there is fresh snow?”

Informant: “The saying goes, ‘There are no such thing as friends on a powder day’.”

Me: “So what exactly does this saying mean?”

Informant: “Okay so what this means is that when there is new snow on the mountain, or ‘powder,’ as a lot of skiers and snowboarders call it, you have no friends, aka skiing the fresh snow takes priority over skiing or conversing with your friends. It pretty much means that nothing, especially not your friends, can distract you from being able to ski the amazing snow.”

Me: “Where was the first time you heard this saying?”

Informant:”My dad told me about it when I was 6 years old and when I went to the top of the mountain for the first time and skied in powder. My dad has skied for 30 years and is an expert skier so he learned it from some of his friends who he went to the mountain with over the years.”

Analysis: This saying is a traditional skiers proverb. It appears that it is one of those sayings that most people know but aren’t exactly sure of the direct origin. The informant, Troy, also stated that his father has skied all over the world and heard the saying before in other states besides California.

The Wolves Will Eat Your Butt

Nationality: American (born Egyptian)
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 7, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic, French

The informant is a graduating senior at the University of Southern California, studying Creative Writing and Social Sciences with an emphasis in Psychology. She was born in Egypt and originally held Egyptian citizenship, but moved to the United States when she was quite young and is now an American citizen.

This piece is something that the informant’s grandmother would tell her when she refused to put her clothes back on after a bath.

“So, when I was younger my family used to always tell me stories in order to get me to do what I was supposed to do. They knew that was kind of the only way to manage myself. So my grandmother, who was especially fond of the horror stories of what happened to naughty children, so um, my personal favorite was when I got out of the bath, I liked to run around naked. And she would tell me that if I didn’t put my underwear on, the wolves would eat my butt.

[laughs] And, when I didn’t believe her, she gave me examples of people with tiny butts and she would tell me why they had tiny butts and it would because the wolves had eaten them. So my cousin had a tiny butt because one day she had forgotten to put her underwear on after the bath, and um, they had come in and eaten her.”

Analysis:

While this is an entertaining anecdote, it is also indicative of what is and isn’t considered “proper” for girls to show. This interested me because of the specificity of the consequences of not putting on underwear—though the informant was naked she was not warned about what would happen if she failed to put on her shirt; the focus was on her underwear. Additionally, this warning only applies to women. The informant’s grandfather describes the buttocks of her female relatives, and not the males. The implication is also that small buttocks are not desirable.

Treat Your Mother with Respect

Nationality: American (born Egyptian)
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 7, 2016
Primary Language: English
Language: Arabic, French

The informant is a graduating senior at the University of Southern California, studying Creative Writing and Social Sciences with an emphasis in Psychology. She was born in Egypt and originally held Egyptian citizenship, but moved to the United States when she was quite young and is now an American citizen.

This piece is an Egyptian proverb about the importance of respecting your mother. The informant recounts her and a friend’s experience with Yo Mama jokes (jokes that insult another person’s mother: ex. Yo Mama’s so fat she rolled over twice and ended up in Africa) and how that reminded her of an Egyptian proverb.

“In Egypt you also cannot make Yo Mama jokes. You will get beaten up. A friend who went there, who grew up here but he was Egyptian, and he went there one summer and he made Yo Mama jokes cause we were in middle school and that’s what we did; everyone’s an asshole in middle school. And um, I think he got punched in the face by his cousin for making that kind of joke.

No it’s just like, the biggest insult you can say to somebody is to insult their mother. It’s like, especially to guys cause it’s like their pride and joy, like “You always treat your mother with the deepest and fondest respect.” So, that was a big proverb. And culture shock when I came here in middle school and everyone was in the Yo Mama phase and I was like, “That is appalling.” But like, I don’t know. Like Yo Mama So Fat jokes, it was just very strange to me.”

Analysis:

While the proverb itself is fairly standard, demonstrated the cultural value of the mother figure in Egyptian culture, it was fascinating to see the conflict that arose when members from both cultures, such as the informant and her friend, participating in or witnessed jokes that directly opposed what they had learned from that proverb.

Arabic Proverb

Nationality: Saudi
Age: 30
Occupation: Student at USC
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 04.20.2016
Primary Language: Arabic
Language: English

Original Script:

القرد بعين امو غزال

Phonetic (Roman) script: Al gird be ain umo ghazaal.

Transliteration: Al gird be ain umo ghazaal.

Full translation: The monkey in the eye of its mother is a gazelle.

Background Information about the Piece by the informant: “I like this because it just is an example of how the Arabic language can be both poetic and really harsh. Arabic is a language where you can write a whole paragraph based off of one insult. We take our insults very seriously and can’t just say ‘F you!’, you have to do better and this is a good one because it’s saying your ugly but in the most round about way possible.

I can’t remember where I learned it but it must have been around high school.

It’s used around people you know it’s not something you say in polite company. There are a lot of poetic ways to insult people in Arabic.”

Context of the Performance: Insulting a person but politely

Thoughts about the piece: Foremost, I have to say the background on this proverb is hilarious and made me laugh so hard the way Reem had explained it to me. The fact that it is a polite way to tell someone, “you are ugly,” is really interesting. This, of course, is considering that in the English language, there is really no way to tell someone “you’re ugly” politely, except for maybe, “you are not the ugliest.” I also found it interesting how, when Reem said it and noted it in her background of the piece, that it was very poetic, and it did not sound like an insult at all, in fact, I thought, when I first heard it, it was actually a really prominent, as well as polite, saying, but it turned out to be a prominent insult instead. It is interesting that it sounded so nice at first, and that things in Arabic sound “poetic” because that is certainly not the case in English. Furthermore, it is interesting that Reem states: “there are a lot of poetic ways to insult people in Arabic,” which seems that the language in itself is beautiful, and there are no brash insults but rather poetic ones.

When Reem had translated this proverb to me, “The monkey in the eye of its mother is a gazelle,” I actually thought it met that a mother is always proud of her children no matter what they seem like to society. Although, I guess that this is the case with proverbs, in which they do not really make sense to the other culture when they are translated into that culture’s language. For example, they are only relative to that specific culture. Thus, this Arabic “saying” becomes an Arabic Proverb.