Category Archives: Gestation, birth, and infancy

Generally up to the first year.

teeth- Venezuela

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: student

Informant My parents told me this story and I practiced it as a kid..So.. In the US the tooth Fairy is what picks up children’s teeth when they fall out… but.. in south american culture we change the tooth fairy for the “Mouse Perez” or  in Spanish its  the…”El Raton Perez”  and… the practice is the same … as the .. um … american.. where the child puts the tooth.. under the um.. pillow .. but it’s a mouse.. instead of a ferry.

I recorded this From my friends Girlfriend, Sara Segura, they both gave me an account of teeth customs, and i think together both accounts can be analyzed not as variants but similiar rituals. While this specific account can be analyzed as oichtype of the tooth fairy. She was raised in the United states but both of her Parents are immigrants from Venezuela.

Las Mañanitas

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 20
Occupation: California Gas Company
Residence: Atwater Village, California
Performance Date: 4/20/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Background:

The informant is my best friend from middle school. He has a twin sister and is older by a couple minutes. He currently works for the California Gas Company and on the side does voice overs for D.J. drops. 

Informant: 

Every year on my birthday my grandma wakes my ass up early in the morning to sing me Las Mañanitas which is the Spanish version of Happy Birthday. Basically, she’s my alarm clock on my birthday. She’s been doing it for 20 years without fail. I love my grandma, but that shit drives me crazy. She wakes me up at 6AM to sing to me.

Lyrics:

Estas son las mañanitas
que cantaba el rey David.
Hoy por ser dia de tu santo
te las cantamos a ti.
Despierta, mi bien, despierta;
mira que ya amaneció.
Ya los pajaritos cantan;
la luna ya se metió
Que linda está la manãna
en que vengo a saludarte;
venimos todos con gusto
y plazer a felicitarte.
El dia en que tu naciste
Nacieron todas las flores
En la fila del bautizmo
cantaron los Ruiseñores
Ya viene amaneciendo
Ya la luz del dia nos dio
Levántate de mañana
mira que ya amaneció
Si yo pudiera bajarte
las estrellas y un lucero
para poder demostrarte
lo mucho que yo te quiero
Con jazmines y flores
Este dia quiero acordar
Hoy por ser dia de tu santo
Te venimos a cantar
Translation:
These are the mañanitas
King David sang.
Today to be your holy day
you sing them to you.
Wake up, my love, awake;
look already dawned.
And the birds sing;
the moon and got
The morning is bordering
when I come to say hello;
we all come willingly
and plazer to congratulate you.
The day you were born
They born all the flowers
In the row of baptism
nightingales
It is already dawning
And the daylight gave us
Get up tomorrow
look already dawned
If I could get off
stars and a bright star
to prove
how much I love you
With jasmine and flowers
I agree this day
Today to be your holy day
We come to sing
Analysis:
This version of the happy birthday song is a lot different from the American version. It has many religious ties which makes the song quite unique in its own light. It shows how much Mexican culture intertwines with Catholic religion.

Cameroonian Pregnancy Rituals & Beliefs

Nationality: Cameroonian
Age: n/a
Occupation: Social Services Supervisor
Residence: Long Beach
Performance Date: 4/25/15
Primary Language: English
Language: French, Spanish, Anyang, Kenyang, Pidgin

My informant is the mother of a USC student. She is an immigrant from Cameroon and came to America with her husband and son before giving birth to their daughter.

“A pregnant woman would, should…at all cost avoid seeing what she would consider as ugly until the gives birth. The fear, is that uh, her baby will become ugly if she does. It is also believed that if she eats a cobra before giving birth that it will speed the delivery of the baby. Again, this—cobra—is a delicacy usually reserved for only, for only the men. If you have not realized it yet, my people in every way see women as less than equal to men. A good woman is supposed to be behind her husband. He must have the last word, she must sleep behind him, she must please him at all cost. This is of course…changing with the access to higher education and influence of western culture. Divorce rates are soaring and more women are opting to marry later, not get married, and not have children…husbands are even blamed when their wives are troublesome because they cannot control her!”

 

Analysis: This belief illuminates the importance of beauty within Cameroonian culture. Especially in the case of the birth being a girl, it would be desired for her to be beautiful so she could marry a wealthy and handsome husband. In addition, the allowance of women to consume cobra during pregnancy demonstrates that women who are bearing children are considered of a higher status than women who are not, because they are allowed to eat foods that are typically reserved only for men (who are looked at with more respect within Cameroonian society). My informant made a point of reiterating that men in their society are more highly valued than women, however also made note that within the western world these beliefs have lost value due to women in the United States being able to attend school and support themselves without a husband. Of course there are communities and families who still adhere strictly to these beliefs even though they live in a western nation such as America.

 

 

Italian Superstitions

Nationality: Italian/American
Age: 55
Occupation: Masseuse
Residence: Nantucket, MA
Performance Date: April 22nd. 2015
Primary Language: English

My informant is my best friend’s mother. She comes from a very Italian family, and learned a lot of folklore from her grandmother. She is a fascinating woman who has traveled the world. She has a wide knowledge of Native American history and folklore. She is involved with the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, a diverse group of women from around the world who are devoted to prayer. She lives on Nantucket, so I was able to Skype with her one day to talk about things she has learned from her Italian heritage, in particular, as well as her other vast knowledge of folklore from around the world.

 

[On her Italian Heritage]

Informant: “I’ll start with my Italian Hertitage because it’s very familiar to me. For example, the Italians were very superstitious for one thing,  I can remember my Great Grandmother would say she could tell the sex of a baby if they used a needle like a pendant over the woman’s belly, if it spun in a circle it meant it was a girl and if it went in a straight line it meant it was a boy. The other one I remember distinctly was my Grandmother said you can never open a gift before the actual date, you should never open it before you birthday because it’s bad luck. I remember being with my mom with her mom once and her mom was not happy about the fact that my mom opened a gift too early… and we left the house and we got to the bottom of the hill [in Italy] and the brakes didn’t work on the car and our car went out into the highway! The present was to blame.”

 

Dead Baby Jokes

Nationality: Dutch
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/23/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Dutch

Informant: I know a lot of dead baby jokes, unfortunately.

Collector: Do you remember any of them offhand?

Informant: I do, actually. They’re all coming back to me. Um, what’s red and silver and keeps running into circles? Or, sorry, circling into walls?

Collector: What?

Informant: A baby with forks in its eyes.

Collector: (gasps). Oh no!

Informant: What gets redder and redder and shorter and shorter?

Collector: What? (muffled by hand over mouth in fear)

Informant: A baby combing its hair with a potato peeler.

Collector: (screams).

Informant: (chuckles at Collector’s reaction).

Collector: These are horrible! I have not heard these before. Like, I’ve heard dead baby jokes before but much more tame!

Informant: Oh yeah. These got terrible.

Collector: …Do you have any more?

Informant: Yeah. Why’d the baby fall out of the tree?

Collector: Why?

Informant: Because it was dead. Why’d the koala fall out of the tree?

Collector: Why?

Informant: Because it was stapled to the baby. Why’d the giraffe die?

Collector: Why?

Informant: The tree fell on him.

Collector: Oh my God.

Informant: Which, you know, doesn’t make sense because why are the giraffes in Australia?

Collector: Yeah. Where’d you hear these? Just in high school going around?

Informant: Yeah! Well, I found them all online.

Collector: You found them online?

Informant: You just look up ‘Dead baby jokes’ and there’s your repertoire of however many dead baby jokes.

Collector: So you took time out of your day to look these up?

Informant: Yep! I took time out of my day to find them. And I told them to people and the ones that I just told you were the best of the best.

Collector’s Notes: We talked a bit about dead baby jokes in class when we talked about humor, and we noted that they come up a lot in booms of baby births.  I also think that it is another way of breaking the tension that comes with talking around taboo topics, such as death, and more seriously, infant death.  It something that has always been a part of our culture, but is seldom really talked about.  People avoid talking about it at all costs, really.  But people can use these jokes to bring up a taboo subject, and talk about it in a way that isn’t tip-toeing around being politically correct or PG.  It’s also a display of a dichotomy of themes.  Mostly people connect babies with the idea of purity and innocence, and murder as the complete opposite.  We take something soft and sweet to heighten to effect of the really horrible topic by contrast.  Also, I think that they’ve been perpetuated because of the clear divide about feelings toward the jokes.  Some are very, very offended, and others think that the conservative need to lighten up and “take a joke.”

What else is interesting about this is the combination of cyberlore and actual word-of-mouth.  In this case, the Informant went online to find jokes that they could later share in person with their friends at school.  I imagine it was a trend and therefore there was more effort put into finding and sharing them.  This is a way that the internet and person-to-person interaction mesh into one being.