Title: The Healing Eggs

General Information about Proverb:

• Customary Lore: Egg Healing Magic Superstition
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Antonio Flores
• Date Collected: May 20, 2019

Informant Data:

• Antonio Flores was born and raised in a barrio near Corpus Christi, Texas in the 1950s. Both of his parents passed away at this young age and his brothers and him worked on a cotton farm to make a living. His extended family also farmed and would help him and his brothers out.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context

Aaron collected this folklore when on the phone with his Grandfather Antonio, where they discussed his life as well as folklore passed down to him from his farming background. Due to the circumstances of his father’s early passing, Antonio’s folklore was learned mainly from his extended family or when he worked at the cotton farm. He often describes them as “Old Indian Tricks” due to his Native American ethnicity. His Tia Eva served as a surrogate doctor due to their occupation and circumstance and this is most likely something that has been in the Flores family for many years. This serves as a kind of magical superstition because if one does A(rubbing the eggs) the B(the subject will be healed) will happen.

• Cultural Context

The main reason for this practice in the Flores family was due to their socio-economic status in the 1950’s. They couldn’t afford a doctor so they had to use other means. Due to their status as low-income Hispanic farmers they most likely faced many external pressures which lead them to develop these practices. By avoiding doctors they most likely used these superstitions instead.

Item:

“When I was a young boy, about eight years old or so I came down with a real bad stomach ache and fever. My brothers and I were all farmers so we didn’t know what to do. We were poor so we couldn’t afford a doctor so we had to make do My Tia Eva came over and she said that she could heal my stomach sickness. She took out about ten to twelve eggs and one by one rubbed the cool eggs on my stomach to heal me. She said that the sickness was being absorbed into the eggs and the coolness of the eggs was being transferred into my stomach. Sure enough the next day I felt healthy again and my stomach stopped hurting. ”

Collector’s Name: Aaron Flores

Title: French Farming Meal Proverb

General Information about Proverb:

• Oral Lore: French Farming Meal Proverb
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: France
• Informant: India Cutler
• Date Collected: May 14, 2019

Informant Data:

• India Cutler was born and raised in McLean, Virginia; she is currently a sophomore at Dartmouth College and she works at the Dartmouth Organic Farm. This passion for farming started when she decided to go on a farming trip across Europe in the summer of 2018. During this trip she farmed in France and Germany most notably the towns of Le Pompidou and Corsica(Ole Rousse). Here she subsistence farmed with a number of host families where she learned how to farm as well as common farming practices and folklore.

Contextual Data:

Social Context

India stated that she heard this proverb when initially meeting her first host family in Le Pompidou. She stated that this proverb is something that has been passed down from generation to generation in the farm and is also told to each farmer that comes and works for them. She said it is almost a rite of passage to be able to work on the farm because the specific eating structure allows them to work efficiently in the farm. In the morning they need a large meal before working on the fields, then for lunch they need an even bigger meal because no only have they been working for hours but they also need to refuel for the next work session at the farm. For dinner they eat a small snack like meal to hold them over for the morning. She explained how they truly utilized their calories for work and didn’t simply eat for fun or just because they were hungry; there was always a purpose and reason for most of what they did on the farm.

Cultural Context

It is quite difficult to understand the cultural implications of this proverb when taken out of a utilitarian context and equally difficult to trace this to a certain cultural phenomena tied to the chronology and portion of meals in French farming folklore. What I have found interesting is that this proverb is not a unique one and is often now cited in scientific articles and a similar eating structure is even called to “Eat Like an Egyptian” by History.com. It is interesting to investigate whether this proverb spread through monogenesis like a language, diffusion like migration of cultural traits, or polygenesis a form of convergent validity.

Item:

“Eat like a king in the morning, like an emperor for lunch, and like a peasant in the evening”

Collector’s Name: Aaron Flores

Title: Amish Wedding Quilt

General Information

• Material Folklore
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Mary Fabio
• Date Collected: May 19, 2019

Informant Data

• Mary Fabio is a fifty-five-year-old doctor who lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was born and raised on Long Island, New York, and attended Dartmouth College. She married into a family with roots in rural Pennsylvania, in an area with considerable Amish influence. After meeting her future husband, she learned about the traditions of their town, where they owned a dairy farm. Many of the traditions have roots in Amish farming traditions meant to bring luck and prosperity to a farm.

Contextual Data

• Social Context
  • Mary encountered this piece of folklore shortly before her wedding. Her mother-in-law had organized friends and family of the couple to make squares for the quilt. Friends from college and work, her sister, her mother, and her in-laws all contributed squares for the quilt, all with memories from their relationships with each other.
  • The quilt served as a way for the couple to physically see the love and support of their friends before the wedding and to know that they would be there for them as they transitioned into life as a married couple, and eventually to a family.
• Cultural Context
  • This tradition has roots in Amish traditions of friendship and love for one’s neighbors. Also known as the Pennsylvania Dutch, the Amish people work as farmers in rural areas of Pennsylvania, New York, and Ohio. Amish culture emphasizes friendship among neighbors, because of the fickle nature of farming, everyone must rely on their neighbors at some point in their lives. Therefore, they placed strong importance on physical expressions of friendship, such as the wedding quilt. In Amish tradition, when a new couple was married, they would move to a new plot of land to begin their lives as farmers, and the wedding quilt symbolized that although they were moving to a new farm, they would always the support of their family and friends.
  • Since her soon-to-be husband’s family lived in a town with significant Amish influence, although they were not Amish themselves, they carried on many Amish traditions. Her mother-in-law had received a wedding quilt when she was married and passed the tradition on to Mary.

Item

• Shown here is the wedding quilt. It includes squares from her friends and family commemorating their bond together, as well as a square that was added later containing pieces of her bridesmaids’ dresses. Each square was handmade by a different person.
  • “A friendship quilt will bring luck and love to a marriage as each square is from a friend or family member that is looking out for the well-being of the newlyweds”

Collector: Jack Kurtz

Title: Tale of the Daoist Farmer

General Information About Item:

• Oral folklore: Folktale
• Language: Chinese (Mandarin)
• Country of Origin: China
• Informant: James Yang
• Date Collected: May 21^st, 2019

Informant Data:

• James Yang was born near the city of Jiyuan in Henan Province, China and lived there through his childhood. For generations, many members of the Yang family were farmers in Jiyuan. James is the youngest of four sons and one daughter and is the father of the folklore collector.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • The Yang family has been farming for many generations. Before immigrating to the United States, James was familiar with the operations of the farm and the lessons it provided.
  • Many life lessons were taught through stories passed down from one generation to another, mostly by word of mouth.
• Cultural Context
  • Daoism is a Chinese philosophical / religious ideology that has had profound influence on the country’s culture.
  • One Daoist idea is to take life events with stride – being humble when good fortune befalls you, and also not to be hung up on misfortunes.
  • The ups and downs in the story of the Daoist farmer is similar to the unpredictability of the weather, which can have a tremendous impact on the season’s crops.

Item: In the tale of the Daoist farmer, the story begins with the farmer, his son, and a horse. One day, the horse runs away. The farmer’s neighbors, observing this, said “How unlucky!”, but the farmer responded, “Maybe.” The next day, the horse returned to the farmer with another horse. The farmer’s neighbors exclaimed, “How lucky!”, but the farmer said again, “Maybe.” A week later, the farmer’s son was riding the new horse when it bucked and threw him off, and the son broke his leg. “How unlucky!” said the neighbors. The farmer only said, “Maybe.” A month later, officers from the army came to the farmer to take his son to the military. Upon seeing his broken leg, however, they left without another word. The neighbors could only marvel with, “How lucky!”

Collector’s Name: Richard Yang

Title: The Legend of Chief Paduke

General Information about Item:

• Oral Lore: Legend
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: United States
• Informant: Samuel Tyrrell
• Date Collected: May 20, 2019

Informant Data:

• Sam is a Dartmouth ’20 studying history who grew up on his family’s tobacco farm outside of Paducah, Kentucky. The farm has been in his dad’s family for three generations and Sam is very knowledgeable about the history of the surrounding area and some of the legends associated with the land there.

Contextual Data:

• Social Context
  • Growing up in Paducah, Sam was frequently exposed to pieces of folklore such as this legend of Chief Paduke’s blessing on the land surrounding Paducah. This legend was told to Sam by his father, who received it from his father. Such legends were often the topic of conversation among schoolchildren in Paducah, many of whom were told a similar legend by their friends or family. While not taken literally by many people today, it provides a form of common knowledge for residents of Paducah to bond over.
• Cultural Context
  • Paducah is named after Chief Paduke, a Chickasaw Indian chief from the early 19^th century whose image appears today on a statue in the center of town. The legend of Chief Paduke holds that his blessing prevented tornadoes in the area and thus made Paducah more suitable for farming as farmers did not have to fear their crops being destroyed by tornadoes. Though he has never heard of any tornadoes happening in Paducah, Sam explained that Paducah sits in an area surrounded by rivers which prevent tornadoes from forming there.

Item:

• Legend has it that Chief Paduke of the Chickasaw Indian tribe walked the lands around Paducah in the early 1800s and gave them a special blessing to prevent storms, which has the result of there being no tornadoes around Paducah.

Associated Files:

Collector’s Name: Tyler Bowen