Title: Blades of Grass

General Information about Item:

Genre: Customary Lore, Magic Superstition

Country of Origin: United States

Informant: GS

Date Collected: 11-1-21

Informant Data:

GS is a male Dartmouth student-athlete on the soccer team in the class of the 2022. He was born and raised in Dallas, Texas. He has been playing soccer for as long as he can remember. Back home in Texas, he played on the Dallas Texans Academy soccer team. He plays for Dartmouth as an outside defender.

Contextual Data:

Social Context: GS’s family is historically not a big soccer family. GS has 3 brothers that all played soccer, but they were the first generation in his family to ever play the sport. GS’s younger brother, Cullen, plays soccer at the University of Pennsylvania. His parents were originally not very familiar with the sport, but they began to enjoy watching the sport more and more as their children grew up. GS’s father grew up in Texas playing football, and so did GS’s grandfather. The context in which GS got this superstition is when his father told him a tradition that his high school football team did before all their games to give them good luck. GS learned this before his first game in his first year at Dartmouth College (2018). He did the ritual that his father told him about, and he played really well. Now, he does it GS before every game. GS informed me about this superstition/ritual when at our apartment when I asked him if he has learned about any soccer superstitions throughout the years.

Cultural Context: Here, GS applied a football tradition that originated a long time ago in Texas to his soccer games at Dartmouth. This shows how certain aspects of folklore can obtain variations and change throughout time.

Item:

Before every game, GS eats a blade of grass that he is about to play on for good luck. If he doesn’t do this he feels like he will play bad.

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

Transcript:

“I eat a blade of grass on the field I am about to play on, every time I play a game. This is for good luck.”

Informant’s Comments:

It’s definitely a weird thing that I do. My dad gave me confidence when he first told me about it. I liked that it was something that he used to do when he was younger, so I felt like I wanted to try it out and carry down the tradition. And it has worked pretty well for me.

Collector’s Comments:

I think it’s interesting that GS originally took a tradition that came from Texas high school football and transferred it over to the Dartmouth College soccer.

Collector’s Name:

George Altirs

Dartmouth College

Russian 13: Slavic Folklore

Professors Gronas and Apresjan

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