Tag Archives: Superstition

Brooms and marriage in Haiti.

M is a 45-year-old Haitian immigrant originally from Port-au-Prince, Haiti. M is currently a body-builder based in Phoenix, Arizona.

M offered me this piece of folklore during a phone conversation. I Informed M that I was in the process of collecting folklore, and asked her if she remembered any superstitions her family in Haiti may have had.

M: When I was growing up, the adults.. from Haiti had a saying that if anyone sweeps under your feet, with a broom.. you will never get married.

Reflection: Though M did not provide me with many background details about this fascinating bit of Haitian folk belief/superstition, I can at least try to interpret its meaning based on historical context. I have heard that in post-colonial and post-slavery nations like Haiti, there is a common marriage tradition in which the bride and groom each jump over a broom during their wedding as a good luck ritual. Assuming that the broom’s association with luck and marriage remains consistent across Haitian folklore, it may be fair to interpret the sweeping broom in M’s account as the antithesis of jumping over a broom, as doing so literally ”sweeps away“ the luck of getting married from underneath an unlucky soul’s feet.

“Bread and butter.”

G is a 50-year-old Caucasian female originally from Phoenix, Arizona. G is a retired school teacher.

G offered this piece of folklore during a phone conversation. I asked G if she had any folklore she would be willing to share with me, and she offered me this superstition she remembered from her childhood.

G: One funny thing growing up was um, if you’re walking with somebody and you split a pole, you would say “bread and butter.”

Reflection: I have not heard of this superstition before, but it reminds me of other phrase based superstitions like saying ”knock on wood” or ”rabbit rabbit” to negate bad luck or engender good luck, respectively. Assuming that saying ”bread and butter” is also luck related, perhaps the phrase nullifies any potential bad luck associated with being forced to separate by an obstacle. The wording of the superstition also appears to nod to the idea that bread and butter are most ideally eaten as a pair (toast), rather than being eaten as separate ingredients. In the same way, people are implied to be better suited together rather than apart by the superstition.

Legend of the owl.

H is a Caucasian-Native-American male originally from Tucson, Arizona. H is currently a corporate manager based in Austin, Texas.

H performed this folklore while visiting LA on a business trip. I met H in Downtown LA for lunch in order to collect folklore he had previously agreed to perform for me. The following is the second of two stories he provided. H first heard the following story from his grandfather.

H: Another legend is of the owl. The Apaches have nothing to do with owls, they see them as the night creature and if you see an owl, you run, my Grandfather would stop if we saw an owl and the trip would be over. The big owl in the Apache stories was evil, he was a giant. Sometimes he was man-like. They were able to paralyze humans with their stare or they could cry and everyone who heard it it was like thunder, and it would cause you to stop, uh, some owls were seen as cannibals and they would eat children, and so you avoided them. The Apaches claimed that the big owl was the sun of the sun, and.. when he was slain, his body hit the earth and his feathers flew off in every direction and those feathers transformed the owl that now live in the forest. And if you saw an owl, you turned and went home.

Reflection: Owls in Apache culture appear to have the same negative connotations that crows have in European culture. As far as I know, crows are not perceived the same way in Apache culture, so I find it interesting that their culture happens to consider the owl, a different type of bird, an evil portent. Based on H’s detail that owls in Apache legend have the power to paralyze people with their cries, there appears to be a direct link between how unsettling or intimidating a bird sounds and how it is perceived across European and Native American cultures. The deep “hoots” of an owl are an evil omen just as the harsh “caws” of a crow are associated with death in European culture.

Rocking Chair Ghosts.

D is a 60-year-old Caucasian female originally from Omaha, Nebraska. D is currently a real estate broker based in Phoenix, Arizona.

D informed me of this folklore during a phone conversation. I asked D if she had any folklore she would be willing to share with me.

D: When I was young, my brother in law who grew up in New Hampshire was at our home. And he, uh, I got out of a rocking chair, and I was little probably four years old and the rocking chair continued to rock, and he kinda weighed down a little bit about it because he believed growing up in New Hampshire that a rocking chair without someone in it that was rocking, that meant there was a ghost in it. So um.. anyway we had to stop the rocking chair from rocking, for him.

Reflection: I have heard of this particular superstition before, and given the context behind the superstition, I understand why D’s brother in law would insist that the chair should be stopped from rocking. As I understand it, an empty rocking chair attracts evil spirits toward itself. Assuming the chair continues to rock long after someone has left it, the spirit has already entered the chair and is free to cause bad luck to enter the household. I don’t know the origins of this folklore, but it seems to be correlated to the perception that inanimate objects moving by themselves is an inherently unnatural occurrence. Even though someone caused the rocking chair to move in the first place, once detached from the human element, the movement becomes uncanny and prompts notions of the supernatural.

Eggs, shoes, and nightmares.

A is a 59-year-old Hispanic American female originally from La Junta, a small town in Southeastern Colorado. A currently works as a background detective in Phoenix Arizona.

A informed me of this folklore over a dinner discussion. We were on the topic of family superstitions, and I asked A if she had any superstitions that she remembered her family believing in.

A: I was told by my parents that you’re not allowed to have eggs at night because you will have nightmares after eating them. They are only meant for the morning. I also remember you were not allowed to put your shoes underneath your head under your bed because that too would cause you nightmares.

Reflection: At first I had a hard time finding a correlation between these seemingly unrelated practices and nightmares. However, as A implies, the nightmares are induced by breaking the natural order of things. Like eating an egg (breakfast food) at night. Applying these same parameters, it can be assumed that keeping shoes underneath your head is harmful given that it breaks the natural order of shoes being on your feet. Based on my personal experiences being raised in a Hispanic family, there is often a strong emphasis on orderliness in the household and not breaking tradition. Perhaps these same values account for the superstitions present in A’s family.