Tag Archives: rural

Snake Skin on a Fence Brings Rain

Age: 21

1. Text: In Texas, there is the folk belief/ritual that if one puts snake skin on their fence, rain is likely to come. 

2. Context: This participant, born and raised in Texas, spoke of a superstitious ritual that he believes is pretty unique to Texas. He says that growing up, whenever he would visit some of the more rural – or even suburban – areas of the state (he himself had grown up in more of an urban area), he would sometimes see fences lined with snakeskin. When he asked his parents about it after seeing it a couple of times – too often for it to just be an odd decoration or coincidence, he explained – his parents just told him it was an old superstition that the snake skin would bring rain. He never really understood why this would be a belief, and explained that his best interpretation or understanding of the odd ritual was that maybe it was an old Native American tradition or something akin to an old superstition left over from a bygone era.   

3. Interviewer’s Interpretation: Upon initially hearing about this folk belief and ritual from my interviewee, I was similarly confused by the superstition. While I don’t fully know whether or not this is necessarily a ritual from any particular Native American tribe or belief system, I don’t doubt that it could have roots in some type of rain-related ritual, as rain rituals appear throughout countless cultures. Perhaps this superstition is meant to evoke a sort of causality through the fact that snakes might become more visibly present during rainy seasons/storms; it seems plausible that people believed that if rain causes snakes to appear more often, maybe this cycle can be triggered through the use of their skins. Just like how earthworms seem to pop up in abundance after a particularly rainy day, maybe snakes too appear more frequently – and maybe through this, people began to believe if they brought out snakes/snake skins they could evoke this pattern and it would begin to rain. 

What to do With a Runaway Horse

Nationality: Irish

Occupation: Horse Race Track Manager

Residence: Waterford, Ireland

Language: English

Text:

“O’Flangagan had a racehorse, the fastest racehorse in Ireland. Every race, the horse won by at least ten lengths, it was never close. But everytime the horse came to the end of the race, instead of crossing the finishing post, it would veer off the side and run off into a field. O’Flanagan was going mental with this horse, so he went to see Seamus, the town vet, he said “I’ve got the fastest horse in Ireland, but every time he gets near the winning post he runs off to the side into a field and the next horse wins. What am I ever going to do?” Seamus said “I am familiar with that problem and I have the solution for you, you must get a small lump of lead and put it in the horse’s left ear, that will solve the problem, guaranteed.” O’Flanagan asked “How will I get the lump of lead in the horse’s ear?” to which the vet replied, “With a gun.”

Context: Before my aunt told me this story/joke, she spent a while nervously laughing and going on about how dark it is. She owns two horses and leases two more, and her job is entirely built around horse races. Her reluctance to share this story shows her admiration for horses, as well as their admiration across rural Ireland. She, along with many of her friends, have had to put down sick horses, and from our conversation it seemed like telling this story reminded her of those experiences and helped her laugh about such a difficult experience.

Analysis:

This joke reveals a lot about the way in which horses are viewed; they are both loved and thought of as precious, but also can be incredibly frustrating and uncooperative, and are still seen as animals below humans. The idea of killing a horse because it ran a race wrong is ridiculous, but the idea of needing to shoot a horse to put it down is not. Combining a ridiculous reason for putting a horse down with the somber act of actually putting it down brings a sense of humor into a difficult situation, similar to other dark humor. The fact that putting a horse down requires this type of humor to cope shows how horses are treasured and loved in this rural area in the South of Ireland.

A Man in a Hospital Trying to Learn More

Nationality: Irish

Occupation: Horse Race Track Manager

Residence: Waterford, Ireland

Language: English

Text:

A few months ago, in a local country hospital, in County Cork a ways outside the city, a nurse picked up the phone and a voice said “I’d like to know how Aidan Sexton is doing, he just had a very serious operation and I’d like to know how his recovery is coming along. Was the operation successful, and if it was, how much longer will it be until he gets to go home again?” The nurse said “hold on please” and disappeared for ten minutes to find his file. When she got back she said “well, looking here he had his operation and it was very successful, he’s recuperating very well, and if it all keeps going well he will be home in about two weeks time.” The nurse then asked “by the way, who am I speaking to?” and the voice said “this is Aidan Sexton, nobody tells me anything in this place.”

Context:
I had to ask my aunt if this really happened, or if it was made up. At first I thought it was real because she chose to use a real sounding name, and the story isn’t clearly fake, but she confirmed that it was made up at some point and she wasn’t aware of anyone actually doing this. She added that Aidan Sexton is a real person she knows, and his name was the first to come to mind as she was telling the story, but he has no specific connection to the story. She also said that she first heard the story told at a pub, after a man complained about needing to drive for an hour to be able to see a doctor.

Analysis:

The story reflects an overall frustration with medical care, which is often even more significant in rural areas where hospitals are often understaffed, far away, and don’t offer the same quality of care as hospitals in cities. The fact that my aunt chose to say the fictional hospital was in County Cork, close to where she lives, and the fact that the name she used was the name of a person she lives across the street from, all point towards the story reflecting her own personal frustration with medical care. The fact that she first heard this story in a pub reflects a lot about it as a form of storytelling; it has just two characters, making it easy to recite, and it is a very quick story which means that it can be told by a less experienced storyteller (or a more experienced one who had a lot to drink), and it does not need to hold an audience’s attention for a long time.

Antelope Valley Fair

Text: 

The Antelope Valley Fair in Lancaster, CA

Minor Genre: 

Festival; Celebration

Context: 

“One of the festivals we had growing up was the Antelope Valley Fair. I think these [fairs] go back to where every year, you grow a crop and all the farmers bring in their best livestock and crops and whatever and show off what they made. It’s a huge community coming together to have a celebration.

“In Lancaster, [the fair] was basically all of the kids who did FFA and 4H and would bring their show animals. Steers, pigs, and sheep were the main livestock. One year, I had a grand champion lamb that I showed. But [in addition to the livestock], you still had all the other arts and crafts and stuff and everything else. It always happened the last week of summer before school started.

“I was there every year, but probably when I was seven or eight was when I started 4H, and that was when we got really into it. But we probably went there just for fun my whole life. My dad’s older brothers did the haybaling competition; before everything was automated, guys would go out on trucks and have to lift these hay bales with pulleys and hay forks. They had tractor races, too –– basically anything associated with a farm. My uncles were haybaling champions for many years in the 1950s.”

Analysis:

Antelope Valley’s first main industry was agriculture, with farmers crowing crops such as alfalfa, various fruit, carrots, onions, lettuce, and potatoes. The city of Lancaster emerged as a bustling city with successful farming at the end of the 19th century, and in the 1980s, had a large increase in population due to the development of new housing tracts. The informant was born in 1974 and would have experienced the Antelope Valley Fair during the period of this population boom, which may have corresponded with a popularity increase in the county fair.

The informant’s memories of the Antelope Valley Fair suggests a heavy agricultural influence in both their personal life and in the city of Lancaster. He had a history of farmers in his family –– the informant’s father raised animals, and his uncles had experience baling hay –– which likely skewed his perception of the fair to lean more heavily on its agricultural experiences, particularly because the informant himself participated in 4H. Additionally, the farm-oriented activities such as competitive hay-baling suggest that success as a farmer was a highly valued trait in Antelope Valley during the time period.

Yunnan/Sichuan Torch Festival

This is a story from when my informant, who is Chinese-American, went back to the rural town in Yunnan, China that her father’s family hails from when she was around 10 years old.

Text

“So in Yunnan, China (and Sichuan, which I’ve learned from outside research) there’s this festival that happens at the end of summer called the torch festival, with a lot of stuff like people dancing around bonfires, lighting paper lanterns, lighting torches, etc. When I was younger and in China during that time, I participated in the festival at the rural town that my grandparents live in called Xiangyun. One of the activities I remember most about it is people gathering in a circle around the fire and jumping over it. I accidentally ran towards it as the same time as another person and burned a hole in my shoe haha.”

Context

“When I asked my parents about it, they said it was to ward off insects as the harvest season started. When I did more research on it, I found out it was based around a specific legend of how a hero warded off a swarm of locusts with fire (I believe this story comes from the Yi people, but double check me on that). As far as I know, I think the custom is endemic to that specific area of Yunnan, cause I couldn’t find it in the resources on the torch festival online. Although I was only looking at sources in English, so that might’ve affected it.”

Interpretation

This festival shares a lot of similarities with many holidays that occur at the end of summer and usher in autumn and winter. It focuses on the presence of light and warmth (lighting torches and lanterns) to ward off the increased darkness of the following days and emphasizes creating a bountiful harvest by warding off harmful insects. The ritual of people jumping over a fire is interesting because it seems like people want to take the risk of being burned to heighten their spirits and get ready for the gloominess of winter.