Being pooped on by a bird gives you good luck.
My informant was first told this by his parents after a passing seagull had relieved itself on his person. At the time it had cheered him up as he claims he was very distraught at the time. Looking back however, he is pretty sure his mom was just trying to make him feel better rather than conveying something that she actually believes.
If I see a penny on the floor and it’s tails, I have to flip it over and leave it there or else I will get bad luck.
My informant told me about this superstition while we were walking. I had spotted a penny on the floor and was going to pick it up until he stopped me. Then, I asked him where he had got this idea from. He told me that he was sure that somebody had told him but was unsure about who the specific person was. Nest, I asked him whether he really believes that picking up a tails penny would be bad luck. He said that he did not but it does not hurt to listen to this superstition.
I feel like this superstition derived from the other superstition that finding a penny that is heads up is good luck. Somebody might have wondered how to respond if they were to find a penny that was tail side up, and simply come to the conclusion that the opposite side should provide good luck. Following this, the whole act of flipping the tails coin to heads helps increase the chance that somebody else will find the good luck penny. For me, I believe that this superstition is a way for people to feel good about themselves in a small way. By flipping the coin to heads, a person would feel like they have first of all vanquished the potential for bad luck and at the same time, saved somebody else from it.
The classic belief about four leaf clovers is that they bring good luck. My informant doesn’t remember where he heard it except that it seemed to be common knowledge from an early age. He never believed it, but when he was fifteen, he found three in one day, later framing them to remember it. The next day, though, he won a martial arts tournament, beating a few people he consider to be more skilled than he was. After that, he told me he always kind of believed that four leaf clovers could bring good luck, even if there was no physical reason they should.
I’ve heard that Eve was said to have taken a four leaf clover with her after she was exiled from the Garden of Eden. That’s said to be a reason they bring luck. I’ve also heard that the four leaves represent faith, hope, and love, and luck. The best reason I can think of for why people associate them with luck is simply their rarity. I’ve been told they’re only supposed to occur once for every ten thousand clovers. Humans often attribute some kind of larger significant to events just because they’re rarer, so it makes sense that we think four leaf clovers are lucky. It is a way of trying to find order in a chaotic world basically. There are billions of people in the world and most of those people will travel to many different places over the course of their lives, lives which last many years. So it makes sense that some people will run into four leaf clovers at some point, but humans still think it’s a very special thing to find one. Therefore, we say they bring good luck.
The informant is currently a student at the University of Southern California and has resided in the United States all her life, though she has gown up with Asian culture due to her parents. She knows many Chinese, Japanese and Thai proverbs due to the fact that her mother is Thai and because she studied abroad in Japan when she was in high school. She first heard this saying when her mother told about it when she was a young child as New Year’s was approaching.The folk belief about good and bad luck is a prominent theme in Chinese culture and the community has several different things that indicate good and bad luck in their society. In Chinese folklore, the informant says that a lot of beliefs are mimicked by the actions of a person. For example, the luck is washed away because a person washes their hair. The act of washing one’s hair simultaneously causes the luck to “wash” away as well. She says that there are several pieces of folk beliefs in China and East Asia that pertain to these types of actions.
I agree that Chinese folklore does have a lot of superstitions about good and bad luck. The analysis of the meaning behind the saying also makes a logical progression, which is easy to follow. The saying is very phonetic, like many of the sayings and proverbs in Asian culture. However, the informant couldn’t tell me why exactly the saying was the day before Chinese New Year’s. I believe it is because Chinese New Year’s is a day full of celebration and beginning anew for the year, and to wash one’s hair the night before would be washing away all the luck that one would have begun with for the year. It is also possible that because the night before New Year’s is a liminal phase between the end of one year and the beginning of a new year, the creation and participation in this ritual is is important.
Trasncribed Text:
“There are some superstitions in German. Like when you hear, in German or..for German people. That when you hear an owl hoot, if you jingle the change in your pocket, you’ll have good luck for the year with your crops.”
The informant is a student at the University of Southern California. She says that she first heard this folk belief from her grandma when she was a young child. The informant says she knows many pieces of folklore from Germany but rarely believes in any of them. She says she thinks this superstition originates from centuries ago when many people believed in luck for their crops to grow. She doesn’t know why and how owls and change are related, though she speculates that many superstitions do not make sense in modern context anymore.
I agree with her analysis about superstitions and crops. Because farmers cannot determine the fate of their crops from just working hard, as weather and other factors were often uncontrollable aspects of the occupation, farmers relied a lot on luck and superstitions to help them. The lack of understanding the meaning of owls and change shows the loss of context as this saying was passed down through generations. If the saying originally had meaning for the owl and the change, it is lost today, at least in the informant’s family.