Kiss, or Don’t Kiss, The Blarney Stone

S is 54, he lived in England where his mother is from for the first ten years of his life before his family moved to California. He is soft spoken and pauses thoughtfully while speaking. He told me about the Blarney Stone, which he learned about visiting Ireland.

“One I heard about visiting Ireland… it’s like a rock that’s sort of like a cliff’s edge and if you hang upside down and kiss the Blarney Stone, you’ll be given the gift of the gab… meaning you will be able to speak well extemporaneously… and so during the day, the tourists come and lay back and kiss the stone but the locals pee on it at night.”

The Blarney Stone is found at the top of Blarney Castle, there are various legends about where the stone came from, some can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20100830230658/http://www.blarneycastle.ie/pages/stone. The bit about locals peeing on it seems to be another piece of folklore. This reddit thread proved inconclusive, some contributors thinking it’s too difficult to get into the castle at night and during the day there would be too many people including a guard to get away with it. https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/3ywbkq/do_people_really_piss_on_the_blarney_stone/. Either way it’s an interesting piece because it shows the tension between a reliance on tourism and the potential for resentment than can arise from that dependence.

“El que nace pa maceta, del corredor no pasa”- Mexican Refrán (Proverb)

Literal Translation: “He who is born a pot, doesn’t leave the hall”

*Originally spoken in Spanish. The following is a rough translation. 

Description (From Transcript): “It means that… people would use it to conform with what they were. For example, for us, we (young people who finished high school) weren’t allowed to continue our studies. We had to get married or conform, no longer have aspirations for anything. Like- one who is born poor, has to stay poor. Like the pot, because it’s a pot, is gonna stay in that hallway. It can’t be in the refrigerator because it’s not a frozen food. So for people- if you were born to be where you were born and not go out anywhere else, you have to stay there and make your life there. Another example is, if I’ve always done custodial work and I want to work in a school, I can tell myself “I don’t think so. El que nace pa maceta, del corredor no pasa”. 

Context: TR is a Mexican woman, born and raised in Zacatecas, Mexico. She immigrated to the United States in 1995. She says that this is a very popular saying that she has heard for as long as she can remember. Everyone would hear this and everyone would say it. She believes that most of the world is familiar with it now because it’s so popular. She has followed it because it’s always been popular but recently, she’s learned that it’s about conformity, which she doesn’t like. 

My interpretation: I interpreted this proverb as both a possible excuse and a possible explanation for a person’s inability to change. Because a pot is a non-living object that literally cannot leave the hall in which it was placed against its will, the proverb makes a commentary about how people in circumstances (such as poverty) have no agency to change their situation, in this case economic status. Because of the informant’s background and upbringing, it makes sense that she would be familiar with this saying, as most people in rural Mexico experience high rates of poverty and struggle to achieve economic mobility. However, just like my informant explained, it could also be an excuse for conformity. If people believe that they can never achieve progress (economic, academic, in the things they pursue) because of their current situations, this phrase can be used as an excuse to not even try to create a change. 

Mockingbird Messager

A is 54 years old. She was born in Ft. Waldon, Florida and moved to Sylvania, Georgia at 2 years old. She’d been there all her life until last year (2021). A has a thick Southern accent that’s very pleasant to listen to. She told me about this omen of mockingbirds carrying messages of impending death.

“If you have a mockingbird that keeps coming up to your house trying to get in, it means someone close to you or in your family is going to pass soon… It’s just a message, there ain’t nothing you can do about it.”

For more about bird folklore in general see https://raptorresource.blogspot.com/2017/10/birds-in-superstition-and-folklore.html for Mockingbird specific folklore see Power, Cathy Kelly. “Thirteen ways of looking at a mockingbird: A collection of critical essays,” Chapter 9. Georgia State University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1996. 9628838

Rosca de Reyes

M is 44. She was born in Los Angeles, her parents are from Guadalajara, Mexico. She told me about how her family practices the tradition of Rosca de Reyes in person.

“So, um… on January 6th, it’s the tres reyes magos they came to Jesus to bring him gifts and um… in order to celebrate that, someone bakes a cake and everyone takes a slice of it, and inside the cake there’s a baby Jesus, like a toy of the baby Jesus and whoever gets the slice with baby Jesus has to throw a party. The cake is called rosca de reyes… it looks like a round pretzel and on top it has like nasty pieces of jelly. In my family we always buy it, we don’t bake it ourselves…but so, the party is I think… in April. You throw a party in celebration of the coming of Jesus.”

The Rosca de Reyes is a variation on King Cake which dates to medieval times. The tradition is linked to Western Christianity and many countries have versions of it. In the United States, it is particularly popular as part of Louisiana’s Mardi Gras. The version M told me about is typical of Spanish speaking countries, especially Mexico. The hiding of the baby in the cake is said to represent the biblical story of Herod’s massacre of the innocents and the party thrown afterwards is supposed to be on Candlemas which is in February. For more information about the King Cake in Louisiana see,https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/02/17/147039138/is-that-a-plastic-baby-jesus-in-my-cake. For more about Rosca de Reyes see https://entrenosotros.consum.es/en/history-roscon-de-reyes. For more about the Candlemas party see https://wearemitu.com/wearemitu/culture/ok-so-you-got-the-baby-jesus-figurine-in-the-rosca-de-reyes-now-what-heres-what-dia-de-la-candelaria-is-all-about/   

“Las Doce Verdades” (“The Twelve Truths”)-  Catholic Prayer

*Originally spoken in Spanish. The following is a rough translation. 

Description (From Transcript): “You tell the first truth and then the second, and then you would go back to the first one. Every time you would tell the next one, you would grab a handkerchief or a cloth and you would add a knot. The first was “La santa casa de Jerusalén donde vive y reina mi padre dios para siempre, Amen” (“The holy house of Jerusalem, where my lord lives and reigns forever, Amen”). You would add a knot and move on to the second. So the first, then the second, then the first again. Then the first, the second, and the third, and the first again, before moving on to the fourth one. And after the 12th– “The twelve apostles”– you would return back to the first again: The holy house of Jerusalem, where my lord lives and reigns forever, Amen”. And when you tied the final knot, that’s where you trapped the witches. They would get choked there. 

Context: TR is a Mexican woman, born and raised in Zacatecas, Mexico. She immigrated to the United States in 1995. This is a Catholic prayer. It was told to her by her grandmother. She explains, 

“This is a prayer but it was also a story that was told by people who believed in witches. In those times, there was no electric light so we would sit and light a lamp with a candle inside it and my grandma would tell us about witches. The light was very opaque so it would be scarier. We would sit with a cinnamon or yerbaniz (mint marigold) tea and once we were scared, we would trap the witches with the prayer of the Twelve Truths”. Even though she never saw a witch, she explains that she did believe in them as a child. She also explains that this is a Catholic prayer but not many people within the religion are familiar with it. 

My interpretation: Although this is a prayer, and therefore a religious practice, it also crosses over into the genres of legends and games because of the unsure belief in witches as well as the audience that the prayer is being told to (children). As explained by the informant, there was also the ritualistic aspect of doing this in a mostly dark environment, drinking hot tea- practices reminiscent of Americans telling scary stories by the fire pit. Additionally, this piece is unique from other Catholic practices and prayers because it crossed over into superstitious and Indigenous beliefs of Brujeria (witchcraft), which is often a taboo topic in the Catholic church.