Tag Archives: sayings

Leaves of Three

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Performance Date: April 7
Primary Language: English

“Leaves of three, let it be. If it’s shiny, watch your heiny. If it’s hairy, it’s a berry”

This piece of folklore is a saying to talk about how to identify poison oak. If it has three leaves or is shiny with oil, watch your heiny, meaning that it is likely poison oak. If the plant is hairy, it is a berry bush. This piece of folklore is performed typically outdoors and used for a very practical sense. It is a teaching tool to enable people to identify poison oak, whose oil will cause rashes on anyone who touches it with bare skin.

            The subject learned this piece of folklore from Boy Scouts. It embodies the type of preparedness and learning the boy scouts emphasizes and is a very practical way of remembering the qualities of a poison oak plant. The subject learned it from their Scoutmaster during a camping trip. The subject, of course, made use of it as a practical saying which is its intended purpose. They remember it because of their interest in the outdoors when they were younger, which was the reason they joined Boy Scouts in the first place.

            This saying is not just a warning for kids. It represents technical education through oral folklore. Typically, something like this would just be told by another person or read in a book. Instead, this saying was created in order to help people remember their qualities. Because of this, it takes on a different form and really represents the importance of passing down knowledge to the younger generations.

“You a scunner?”/”You’re a wee scunner!”

Nationality: Scottish
Age: 95
Occupation: Unemployed
Residence: Aberdeen, Scotland
Performance Date: April 11, 2020
Primary Language: English

MAIN PIECE

“You a scunner?”/”You’re a wee scunner!”

“Scunner is like a bother, specifically like a kid or something.  I don’t know what came first, but I say “You a scunner?” and so do many people I know around here, but my friends in Edinburgh say “You’re a wee scunner!”  We use it to kind of callout a child for being a whiner.

BACKGROUND

This informant, MS, comes from Aberdeen, Scotland and has lived there for all of her life, except for a few years she spent in London.   She’s from the silent generation so she has heard a lot of different sayings come and go over the years, but she says she remembers telling this to her sons, her grandchildren, and her great grandchildren. She even remembers her mother saying it to her when she was a little kid.

CONTEXT

I invited MS, my great grandmother, to talk with me after a family reunion zoom call.  A few

days later, we got together and we live streamed a rerun of Strictly Come Dancing over zoom and during the commercial breaks, we talked over some  folklore from her life in Scotland, specifically from her childhood in Aberdeen.

THOUGHTS

What’s fascinating to me is the dichotomy of this statement.  It appears that the idea of calling kids “scunners” when they misbehave is universal among the Scottish folk group as a whole, but the way it is said is regional within the folk group which shows you slightly different meanings.  The Aberdeen way of saying it is so much more questioning, while the Edinburgh way is more accusatory and statement based.  It shows you that variation is a very huge part of folklore, especially in this way of saying the same thing.

“And That’s the Night That the Lights Went Out In Georgia”

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Unemployed
Residence: Jacksonville, FL
Performance Date: April 13,2020
Primary Language: English

MAIN PIECE

“And that’s the night the lights went out in Georgia”

“This is a saying that I’ve found is common among mothers and older Southern women.  When someone does something that will get them into massive trouble, other people will say, “And that’s the night the lights went out in Georgia.”  People use it very sparsely, like in big dramatic situations, not common small things.  It’s kind of like the equivalent of saying, “he’s a dead man.””

BACKGROUND

This informant, HA, was born in Pensacola, FL but has lived in a few different parts of the American South for awhile, specifically the Floribama coastal area.  His family has stayed in the south for as far back as he can remember.  He has learned this saying from listening to his mother and remembers it from a time a church board member sent a scathing letter about the priest to the congregation and his mother said it.

CONTEXT

I talked to HA by inviting them onto a zoom call with a few other friends we both knew from summer vacations where I used to live in Panama City, Florida.  After the call I asked if he could stay and chat and we shared stories about our lives while I asked him questions about sayings and activities he remembered from his childhood.

THOUGHTS

Looking into it, it seems  as if the saying comes from a popular country song by Vicki Lawrence that was later popularized in the nineties by Reba McEntire.  As this song came out a good amount of years before HA was born,  it makes sense that the song and it’s lasting effect on the culture of Southern vernacular fit her age demographic.  It gives a great example of just how pop culture can be  translated into folklore just as much as  folklore is turned into pop culture. It seems like the song is about killing a cheating wife so it makes sense that HA would say it’s like “he’s a dead man.”

“I’ve Had The Radish”

Nationality: United States of America
Age: 49
Occupation: N/A
Residence: Kansas City, MO
Performance Date: 4/18/20
Primary Language: English

Main piece:

“I’ve had the radish” as a saying of exasperation and general exhaustion with someone or something.

Background:

My informant is a 49 year old woman living in Kansas City, Missouri. She grew up in Joplin but moved around during her 20s, living for some period in Philadelphia. There, she worked for a large non-profit and one of the women there, named Tamar, commonly used this phrase in an exasperated reaction to something. Eventually, the informant and her fellow coworkers and friends started using it out of habit without fully understanding its origin or meaning. Much later, they researched it and they believe it comes from the practice of eating a radish at the end of dinner to clean one’s pallet. Now, it is used in her family and amongst her friends as a statement of finality with something or someone.

Context:

I have heard this phrase throughout my life but this exchange happened in her living room following my asking if she knew of any folklore sayings.

Thoughts:

For me, part of the appeal of this phrase is the strangeness of it to someone outside of a culture that uses it. For other similar sayings bound to a specific saying, generally I feel as though one can roughly figure out at least part of what is being said with it. However, from an outsider’s perspective, the phrase “I’ve had the radish” seemingly has very little to do with one being at the end of their patience. This point was emphasized by my informant who also found interest in the phrase originated in utter confusion. In this regard, the phrase can serve as an indicator for who is within a specific culture. The other major component of this phrase is the ties to an agricultural life in an urban environment. The notion of eating a radish as a palette cleanser for a meal is mostly only applicable to those that have consistent radish crops. The assumption is therefore that this phrase has ties to a more agricultural culture. While a modern world might not have this tradition of eating a radish at the end of dinner, by using the phrase, the culture remains alive albeit in a new form. 

Step on a crack, and you will break your mother’s back.

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: student
Performance Date: Apr. 8, 2019
Primary Language: English

Context
The informant is a Chinese American. We were discussing interesting superstitions in Chinese or American cultures when she brought out this item.

Content
You’re not supposed to step on cracks in the floor. If you step on it, you’re going to break your mother’s back. And I think kids kinda play for fun with it when they’re little. There are very few kids who actually believe it. Obviously, because kids step on it all the time, and no one’s mother dies of that. It’s mostly just for fun.
Interviewer: And how do they play with it? Like in what situations?
Informant: Someone would say, don’t step on the cracks or you would break your mother’s back. And all the kids have to avoid stepping on cracks. They just have to all walk around like to avoid cracks,
Interviewer: And they just do it for fun?
Informant: Yeah, they just do it for fun.
Interviewer: Like, they laugh and walk around it?
Informant: Kind of. It’s more like if someone does accidentally step on a crack, they would point it out and like, ‘haha, you stepped on a crack; you broke your mother’s back!’ kind of thing. It’s obviously rude and stupid.

Analysis
First, the saying itself includes a rhyming between “back” and “crack”. This is probably how the crack in the road is connected with the mother’s back.
Second, the saying involves homeopathic magic. Stepping on a crack is likened to actually stepping on mother’s back.
Third, the kids make fun of the saying, because they don’t believe in it. There is a counter-hegemonic feeling involved. The kids are supposed to follow the saying even they don’t believe it, so they follow the saying in an exaggerated way: for example, they intentionally avoid all the crack, and make fun of the kid who accidentally steps on a crack instead of feeling worried for the kid’s mom.
My informant doesn’t believe in the saying. She thinks the saying is stupid. She also cannot understand the doings of the kids.