Ear are ringing, words are singing

Nationality: Italian
Age: 57
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/13/2021
Primary Language: Italian

Main piece:

S.C.:I don’t know what kind of origin this can have, but my mum used to tell me that when your ears start ringing, someone you know is either thinking or talking about you. Ehm…From the moment that it is something related to the ear, it is said that if the ear ringing is the right one, what the person is saying is positive, while if the ear ringing is the left one, the person is saying bad things. Generally, if in the moment of the ringing you are with a group of people you should ask one random person for a number comprehended between 1 and 21, and that number correspond to a letter of the alphabet. In this way, you get to know who is talking or thinking about you, because…yeah the number the person picked corresponds to the initial of the name of who is talking and thinking about you. 

This should, also, serve as a cure for the fastidious ringing [smiles] I don’t know, saying it out-loud makes it sound absorb, but it has actually always worked for me. Every-time I asked for a number and associated the resulted letter with a person, the ringing stopped. 

Background:

My informant -my mother- is a 57 years old woman, born in Bologna from Italian parents. She learnt this practice from her mum and she passed it down to her daughter as well. She still practices nowadays. 

Context:

I was in the informants’s house when she mentioned and explained it.   

Thoughts:

I think that this tradition is quite common for many cultures and countries, however, I am not so sure about the diffusion of the counter-action my informant suggests taking or performing.

I have always been “educated” at performing it by my mum, who, whenever her ears were ringing, would exclaim “tell me a number”, and then would start to list the alphabet to find the corresponding letter. This particular action of asking for a number can be, in my opinion, interpreted as a peculiar form of conversion superstition, which is meant to send the possibly evil energies or gossips away. In fact, if the ringing is interpreted as a bad thing -as I usually do-, the fact of discovering the source and auto-curing the ‘ailment’ by saying its name out-loud is a form of prevention and shield. 

Tutti i nodi vengono al pettine

Nationality: Italian
Age: 57
Occupation: Teacher
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/13/2021
Primary Language: Italian

Main piece:

“Tutti i nodi vengono al pettine”

Transliteration: 

Tutti: All

i nodi: knots

vengono: come

al pettine: to the comb

Translation: All the knots come to the comb, meaning that the truth will always come out in the end and that all the bad actions or lies one commits or tells will eventually be unmasked and punished.

Background:

My informant is a 57 years old woman, born in Bologna from Italian parents. She has been told this words since she was a child and they made up much of her upbringing and education, which both had a particular emphasis on the importance of caring for the other and treating him or her as “you would treat yourself”.

Context:

My informant -my mother- has always repeated these words to me since I was really young, and when I asked her if she had some proverbs she wanted to tell me for tis collection project, she immediately brought this one up. We were having breakfast in the informant’s house.

Thoughts:

This proverb wants to be both a teaching and a warning, a philosophical approach to the evil received and, at the same time, an educational indication that should be respected.

On on side, indeed, the proverb serves as a sort of eschatological or, better, karmic ‘prophecy’ for actions committed. I often received this proverb as a reassurance when lamenting for injustices or wrongdoings received, so as to say that those who act badly or give negative energies to others will, in the end, receive their share of punishment. 

On the other hand, this saying also serves as an advice, which basically invites you to always think twice before doing something, especially if this something involves other people as well. 

Even if my general interpretation and understanding of this proverb was mostly related to what I have just explained, as my informant pointed out, the proverb can also be interpreted with a meaning related to truth: no matter how many lies are told or how many obstacle will be placed in its course, truth will always find its way to be revealed. 

I believe this proverb to be quite representative of Italian values and principles, which have been, in time, greatly influenced by Catholicism and Christian doctrine. As a matter of fact, this proverb encompasses both the care one should have towards the other and, simultaneously, the conception of Final Judgment, which are two of the main pillars of the Roman Church.

Ummarell

Nationality: Italian
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/23/2021
Primary Language: Italian

Main piece:

Ummarell

Transliteration in Italian: omarello, omino, ometto

Transliteration in English: little man

Translation: old man who is retired 

M.P.: This is a typical Bolognese expression, which indicates those old men who are like retired and spend their time looking at construction sites. In the common imaginary they are portrayed in their typical pose, with crossed hands behind their backs.

[gets up laughing and mimics the physical pose]

And yes, this word actually entered the slang of the city because it is sometimes used also as a…a sort of joking insult. Like if someone…I don’t know…If someone acts like an old man, or stops in front of building sites, or repeatedly walks with his hand crossed behind his back, friends will make fun of him saying things like “Do not act like an ummarell”. 

Background:

My informant is a 23 years old girl who was born in Bologna, Italy, and who is now getting her master degree in archaeology and Egyptology at the city’s university, and who got her bachelor degree in anthropology and oriental studies 2 years ago always at Bologna’s Alma Mater Studiorum. She does’t recall the exact place and time in which she learnt this word, and neither she remember the first source from which she heard this term, she just knows it is a fundamental part of her “folk-culture”, as she herself defined it.

Context:

I myself use a lot this word and my informant mentioned this piece while we were chatting at a restaurant in the city center of Bologna.

Thoughts:

Something I have always found quite intriguing is the great amount of dialects present in the Italian peninsula. Every region has its own peculiar and proper dialectal speech, and while in some places, especially small towns, they are still spoken -particularly by the older generations-, in bigger cities, dialects have been transformed into slang and adapted to the official language, that is, Italian. In fact, every main city of every Italian region -there are 20 regions in Italy- has words that are typical to that city -or the surrounding area- only. In the majority of cases, these words are not used or even understood by people who do not belong to that community. 

Furthermore, these words tend to evolve from generation to generation, so it happens that only peer groups understand what is being said or meant through that term. 

In these ways, they can be said to perfectly reflect folklore’s definition of “multiplicity and variation”.

Ummarell, precisely, is one of these folk-terms as, deriving from the Emilian dialect, it’s used by people inside the colloquial lingo to represent not only the old retired men who stop at every building site they encounter -as the original meaning implies-, but also all those people who act in this way. 

It becomes an informal way of making fun of a person who act as an old man, or that has the same behavior of old retired man. In this way, a sort of generational division is created, as the youth makes fun of peers pejoratively associating it with the elderly. 

Additionally, it is also used to indicate those who are nosy and who, not having much to do in their spare-time, do useless stuff like watching construction sites and giving unrequested advices to the ones who are working.

Never light up a cigarette from a candle

Nationality: Italian
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/23/2021
Primary Language: Italian

Main piece:

M.P.: If I am not wrong, my grandmother was the one who told me this. So we were in her house and I lighted up a cigarette from a candle. My grandmother basically turned white and told me “No, you don’t light cigarettes from candles”. Whereupon, I didn’t know the reason why. Wait how was it. [pauses in a monument of reflection]. Ah Yes. My grandma said “you don’t light up cigarette from candles because every time you do so a sailor dies”. 
From what I understood there is some sort of historical reason behind this belief, but I am not sure about the specific origin.

Background:

My informant is a 23 years old girl who was born in Bologna, Italy, and whose paternal grandmother is now in her 80s. She mentioned this piece to me, because she remembered being particularly surprised by it, especially considering that, despite having been a smoker for quite a bit now, she had never heard it before her grandma advised her against doing such thing. She also added that, even if she does’t consider herself superstitious, she has never done it after the mentioned episode.

Context:

My informant told me this folk-belief while she was smoking a cigaret between a course and the next one during a lunch. 

Thoughts:

Many are the folk-belief and folk-superstitions which are somehow related to history and historical events. In this case, -despite the multiple assumptions made- this particular saying, mostly diffused in Eastern and Northern Europe, is said to derive from the period in which sailors, after working on sea, used to top up their profits by making and selling matches. Consequently, lighting up a cigarette from a candle, instead of using a match, implied less earnings for sailors, who, left without money, could have eventually starved to death.

In my opinion, two are the things worth of mention. First, it is interesting to notice the process of diffusion the belief underwent, considering that from Eastern and Northern Europe -where the superstition is though to be originated-, it was, someway, propagated in other parts of the continent (if not the world) as well.

Secondly, the aesthetic of belief is, here, one of the principle sources of appeal, as my informant pointed out that, despite her lack of “faith” in superstitions, she has never lighted up a cigaret from a candle never again. This was, probably, due to the fact that it was her grandmother who told her this and, as often happens, older people are perceived as wiser, and, at the same time, the absence of explanation -and the almost mystical curiosity which from it derives- made it more mysteriously fascinating. 

-https://people.howstuffworks.com/does-lighting-cigarette-with-candle-cause-sailor-to-die.htm

The Stony House

Nationality: Italian
Age: 23
Occupation: Student
Residence: Bologna
Performance Date: 04/23/2021
Primary Language: Italian

Main piece:

M.P.: Outside the center of Monghidoro, there is a beautiful big stony house which is constantly in renovation, even if never inhabited. And I’ve never understood why such a beautiful house, which is also in a good position, has always been abandoned. So one day I asked my grandfather, who used to live in a neighboring town, which is something like…I don’t know, something like 3 kilometers away from the village in which the house is found. I asked him if he knew why. He told me that basically that house was a military command occupied by the Nazis during the War and which served as a sort of prison, for people to be “interrogated” [does gestures of quote citation with her hands] by German Soldiers. Obviously, this interrogations were not spoken questionings, but soldiers used to do everything they could to extort confessions from prisoners. And my grand-father told me that he remembers hearing screams from his house, which was located some kilometers away. And everyone knew. So basically this house after the war was never inhabited again, because even if it was restructured etcetera etcetera [does gestures with her hands], no-one has ever wanted to live there. It is said that screams can still be heard inside of it. Besides, people do not want to talk about this. If you ask questions, no one knows anything about it, no one remembers it. Still, even if they claim of not knowing anything, they do not want to go inside of it, so obviously they know. 

Background:

My informant is a 23 years old girl who was born in Bologna, Italy, and whose paternal grandfather was born in a village on the Tosco-Emilian Apennines-where the mentioned town of Monghidoro is located-, which was, during World War 2, one of the major Italian war fronts. As a matter of fact, many towns and villages ‘hosted’, or better, were occupied both by German and American troops, and many are the legends, memories, beliefs and events related to war times people of the place remember. 

Context:

My grandmother as well was born in those areas, so I got to know some  war-times’ stories myself as well. However, I had never knew about this particular legend, which my informant told me over a lunch.

Thoughts:

This legend surly holds a significant value, both historically and folkloristic-ally speaking. It is in my opinion the perfect example of something taken from history and later transomed, for a reason or another, into a folk-piece. The aesthetic of belief plays, here as well, a significant role, it being the engine which makes the legend propagate through time: when people -even people coming from other cities- hear this story and its legendary value from residents of the place or from the surrounding area, they are immediately indirectly warned against buying that house, and this is the reason why it has never been inhabited since the disastrous events of World War 2. Many are, in fact, the people who search vacation houses in that area, and this would be a perfect, beautiful and convenient choice. Yet, still there is, with to tenets or occupants. 

In second place, another interesting point is the emphasis my informant puts on the fact that no one wants to talk about it: there is a sort of code of slice related to it, which, somehow, recalls the concept of homeopathic magic, in the sense that, if you do not talk about this and you completely dissociate yourself from it, you cannot be touched or affected from the bad energies the place emits. Plus, it is also a form of protection against the bed memories the people of the place have related to the war and specifically the Nazi occupation of the territory.