Title: Cleaning Hands

General Information about Item:

• Customary Folklore Ritual
• Superstitious process
• Rite of Transition
• Place of Origin: Upper Valley
• Informant (Anonymous) A
• Collected 2/24/18

Informant Data: Informant A was born and raised in the Upper Valley, and has spent most of the last 3 decades living in Vermont and working as a roofer. His family has a rich tradition of making moonshine, and in his spare time he enjoys building things on his property.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context: This piece of folklore was originally taught to him by the Informant’s father. As he grew up, his father had brought the Informant into his family shared and taught him everything that he knew so that he could carry the tradition on to later generations. This folklore originated from the illegal nature of producing moonshine. The people present during this ritual are the people that participated in the distilling of the moonshine. The performance of this ritual/superstition always serves as a reassurance of the secrecy that the moonshining will be kept. The participants know that when they do this act they are safe from other people finding out about what they had worked on.
• Cultural Context: This ritual/superstition derives from the culture of moonshine. Producing moonshine is illegal, so dealing moonshine comes with a lot of cautious and deliberate actions. This superstitious ritual is a reassurance for the secrecy of the producing moonshine to avoid legal issues and allow the production of moonshine continues in the family for many years to come.

Item:

• The Informant was taught by his father the importance of keeping everything about moonshine inside the family. By doing this, the family could remain safe and no one would find out about the family illegally producing moonshine. One way to do this was to clean his hands after working on moonshine. The Informant’s family keeps all of their materials and devices to produce moonshine in the family’s barn. After anyone goes into the barn and touches any material or device their hands are deemed to be “dirty”. In order to cleanse them before they return to the world, this person must clean his hands on a towel that hangs next to the barn door. This towel was hung by the Informant’s grandfather and is still used today. After this person rubs his hands on the towel, the person’s hands are then “clean”. This act of rubbing one’s hands on the towel may not actually clean their hands, but rather serves as a rite of transition of cleaning their hands of the act before returning back to the world. This is also an example of a conversion superstitious because it is believed that if someone does not wiped their hands on the towel they will get caught for doing this illegal act.

Associated file (a video, audio, or image file):

Transcript:

Informant’s Comments: That towel has been there for so long and is so dirty, but I would never want to get my family or me in trouble.

Collector’s Comments: This is an example of both a customary folklore ritual as well as a conversion superstition. It is always performed to ensure that the person does not get in trouble for producing moonshine. It can also be seen as a rite of transition, going from a secret place to the outside world.

Collector’s Name: Jack Korzelius

Tags/Keywords:

• Customary folklore ritual
• Conversion superstition
• Rite of Transition
• Cleaning Hands
• Cleansing