Tag Archives: sign superstition

One Strip Wonder (Jack Cameron)

Title: One Strip Wonder

General Information about Item:

  • Sign superstition
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: Canada
  • Informant: NU
  • Date Collected: 10/29/21

Informant Data:

  • NU is a 21-year-old Dartmouth student in the class of 2024.  He was born in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada and raised from age 12 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Nick is a member of the Men’s Varsity Hockey team at Dartmouth. Away from hockey, Nick is an amateur DJ who enjoys playing his music at various functions.

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: Hockey players have to un-tape and re-tape their stick after almost every use. Tape on a hockey stick allows for more grip on the puck when passing, shooting, or stickhandling. Some players elect to apply wax onto the tape to prevent the buildup of snow and ice on the blade of their stick over the course of a practice or game.
  • Social Context: This specific superstition was mentioned when the interviewee was their pre-game routine. Hockey players tape their sticks in a multitude of different ways, all depending on personal preference.  Though the taping of the stick is often different, every hockey player does it after almost every use.

Item:

  • Un-taping a hockey stick happens very quickly, but in this case, the tape must come off all in one piece. Hockey sticks are taping in a looping motion, slightly overlapping each strip so that there are no gaps. To be able to take the tape off in one piece means that the tape was worn down in a specific pattern.  

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

Transcript:

  • “A sign of good luck in Canada is when your tape comes off all in one. I don’t really know where it started, but we were always told that if your tape comes off all as one piece then you have to stick it to a wall somewhere in the room for good luck. I was told that it means that your stick is ready for a new tape job which means you’re more likely to score a goal, kind of like a snake shedding its skin to get a new layer.”

Informant’s Comments:

  • All of the Canadians on my team have heard of this and done this, but the Americans always look at us funny and think it’s dumb.

Collector’s Comments:

  • I found this sign superstition to be very interesting. I am also a hockey player, and this was something that I was taught when I was young – maybe ten or twelve years old. I was equally as surprised as Nick when I heard that Americans do not treat it the same way, and always feel a sense of happiness when my tape comes off all in one go.

Collector’s Name:

Jack Cameron

Dartmouth College

Russ013 21F

Prof. Apresyan and Prof. Gronas

Princeton Superstitions

Title: Princeton Superstitions – Annie Kuehl 

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Lore, Sign Superstition, Magic Superstition
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Annie Kuehl 
  • Date Collected: 11/10/21

Informant Data:

  • Annie Kuehl is a female Princeton student in the class of 2024. She is from Edina, Minnesota and lived there her whole life. She is currently living in Princeton, NJ. At school Annie is on the Women’s Ice Hockey team and plans to pursue a career in business. She has 2 superstitions that she follows strictly before games. 

Contextual Data:

  • Cultural Context: The cultural context is being part of a team where other girls use white stick tape as well, which is a superstition passed down from team to team. 
  • Social Context: The social context is interacting with people who also tape their back-up sticks before games, along with getting caffeine. 
  • The magic substance in the superstition about taping her sticks is the white tape. 

Item:

  • This item is a customary type of folklore under the genre of magic superstition. Annie performs these before each home game. 

Transcript:

  • “If CVS is out of Celcius Green Tea Lemonade then I will go to Starbucks and get a Venti Iced Vanilla latte. I tape all 3 of my sticks with white tape before our team warm ups.  ‘I once broke my stick and had to use my backup, which had the worst tape job of my life, so ever since then I’ve starting taping all 3,’”

Informant’s Comments:

  • Annie mentioned that if she did not do these two things or if she only taped two sticks then she would play badly and not be able to communicate with the women she plays with. She also said she now tapes her backup sticks with her linemates in order to play well. 

Collector’s Comments:

  • I was very intrigued by Annie’s superstitions because she was the first person who mentioned a sign superstition. It was also interesting to hear about the reason she tapes all three of her sticks based on something that happened to her, but that how she started using white tape initially was because her idol on the team did before her. 

Collector’s Name: Currie Putrah 

If the Cows are Sitting

Title: If the Cows are Sitting

General Information

  • Sign superstition
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: John Kurtz Sr.
  • Date Collected: May 19, 2019

Informant Data

  • John Kurtz is a fifty-five-year-old former business owner and current consultant. He currently lives in Philadelphia, but he was born and raised on a dairy farm in Morgantown, Pennsylvania. His family owned the farm for multiple generations, but it is no longer operational. He worked on the farm, doing chores and helping out from a young age, where he learned about the traditions of farmers and their workers.

Contextual data

  • Social Context
    • John first encountered this bit of farming folklore when he helped the workers on the farm as a child. As a young child, he helped with the smaller animals, such as the chickens. As he grew older, he began to work on larger projects with the farm workers, mending fences, repairing the barn, and moving bales of hay.
    • The workers would often tell tales among themselves while they worked as a form of entertainment, but the most common pieces of folklore were superstitions that either informed about the future or brought good luck to the farm. It is from these workers that John first encountered the collected item of folklore. The workers would observe the behavior of the animals they tended to predict the weather; a habit John picked up on while working on the farm.
  • Cultural Context
    • The observation of animal behavior to gather information about impending weather is a common farming practice. This practice originated from early American farmers, as they had no reliable way to predict the weather, even though the weather played a significant role in their lives. In order to plan their days, farmers needed some way to predict the weather, and so the practice of observing animals came into being as they seemed to be more in touch with nature than the farmers.

Item

  • “If the cows are sitting down, then it means that it is going to rain, because they are trying to save a warm, dry patch in the field for after the rain.”

Transcript:

Jack: “Can you tell me a little about some superstitions that you had on the farm?”

John: “When I was younger, the workers would often point out when the whole herd of cows was sitting down, and they would say that it meant that it was going to rain.”

Jack: “Do you know why that meant it was going to rain?”

John: “Well… the first time that I heard it, I didn’t understand what it meant, so I asked my dad to explain it to me, and he said, ‘If the cows are sitting down, then it means that it is going to rain, because they are trying to save a warm, dry patch in the field for after the rain.’ I’m not sure that he actually believed it, but the workers took the cows’ behavior very seriously.”

Jack: “Ok thanks, were there any other superstitions on the farm.”

John: “Not that I can remember, but if I think of anymore, I will let you know.”

Jack: “Ok, thank you.”

Collector Jack Kurtz (son of informant)

Crow vs. Magpie

Title: Crow vs. Magpie

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore: Korean Superstition (Bad luck vs. Good luck)
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: Korea
  • Informant: Sunglim Kim
  • Date Collected: November 5, 2018

Informant Data:

  • Sunglim Kim was born and raised in Seoul, Korea until the age of 17. Her family origins are Korean. When she was a junior in high school she moved to the United States, and went to high school in Seattle, Washington. She then went to UC Berkeley for her undergraduate degree, went back to work in Korea for a few years, and then came back to the United States to get her masters degree at the University of Kansas, and then went back to Berkeley for her PHD. Currently, she is a professor of Korean Art and Culture, in the department of Art History at Dartmouth College. This is her 7th year teaching at Dartmouth College. She is a mother of two children.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context:At a very young age (around the age of 6) Sunglim Kim’s friends told her about this superstition. This was a commonly held superstition that all of her friends also believed in. When she was younger she said that she used to believe in these superstitions, and if she saw a crow in the morning going to school it would give her a nervous pit in her stomach that something bad was going to happen. However, she says now that she does not believe in these superstitions. But she will still say that it is a good omen when she sees a magpie.
  • Cultural Context:This folklore is widely held in Korean culture, although our informants did not know when this originated. This folklore originated in Korea. However, there are others cultures that associate the crow with folklore. In India for instance, the crow represents their ancestors, so it is not a bad omen. In Japan and America however, the crow is also associated with a bad omen, but not necessarily bad luck. There is also other folklore tied to these birds in Korean culture as well, Sunglim Kim described. For instance, there is a story about a boy saving a magpie from a snake. The snake then got mad at the boy and tried to attack him, but the magpie got involved and sacrificed itself for the boy. This story represents the magpie as the weak yet good person that doesn’t harm anyone else.

Item:

  • If you see a crow cawing it is considered to bring you bad luck, however, if you see a magpie singing, it is considered to bring you good luck and possibly will bring good guests to visit your house.

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

Transcript of Associated File:

  • “There are two black birds. Crow is Bad Luck, but Magpie will bring good luck, or good guests will come to the house.”

Informants Comments:

  • The informant said that she believed in this folklore when she was a kid, however, she no longer believes in this folklore.

Collector’s Comments:

  • This folklore was interesting to me because Sunglim Kim did not still believe in the bad luck and good luck associated from seeing these birds, yet she admitted that she would still have positive thought associated with magpies and negative thoughts associated with crows. This shows how folklore will engrain an idea into peoples heads, even if they are not conscious of this belief. This piece of folklore is a Sign Superstition, which means if A, then B. So if you see a magpie, it brings good luck. Whereas if you see a crow, it brings bad luck.

Collector’s Name: Kipling Weisel

Tags/Keywords:

  • Korean. Superstition. Crow. Magpie. Good Luck. Bad Luck. Sign Superstition.

Blabbermouth

Title: Blabbermouth

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore: Korean Superstition (Bad Luck)
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: Korea
  • Informant: A.A.
  • Date Collected: November 10, 2018

Informant Data:

  • A.A. was born in Seoul, South Korea where he lived with his grandparents in the middle of the country. When he was three years old, J. moved to Tijuana, Mexico, before eventually immigrating to the United States and settling down in the Los Angeles, California area. Currently, J. is Junior undergraduate student at Dartmouth College. He is double majoring in Psychology and Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context:

    As a child, J. tended to be extremely sassy and talk a lot. As a means of getting J. to talk less, his mother told him that if he kept talking as much as he did, and did not quiet down when told to, a frog would jump out his mouth. J. did not believe this. One night, though, when J. was 5 years old, his mother made a traditional Korean dish that was comprised mainly of spinach. As usual, J. was talking his mother’s ear off, when she asked him to quiet down. When he did not do so, his mother reminded him about the frog, but this did not work either. Suddenly, his mother turned to him and spit out a clump of spinach, which J. thought was a frog. Freaked out by the incident which he had just witnessed, J. was permanently scarred from the incident and did not speak out against his mother again.

  • Cultural Context:

    Korean cultures are very communalists, and respect is a large part of society. Listening to ones elders and being respectful of their rules and traditions is taken very seriously in Korean, as well as most Asian cultures. This superstition is one that is used to control a child’s behavior and have them learn to respect their elders, as well as reinforce these values.

Item:

  • One is cursed with the a frog in the mouth if that person refuses to be quiet or talks back to an elder. In this case, the frog is bad luck and caused by such actions if the person does not change their attitude.

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

Blabbermouth MP4

Informants Comments:

  • “You don’t want to speak out when a teacher is talking especially, or when your parents are talking because you don’t want to be talking over them. You want to show some level of respect.”

Collector’s Comments:

  • This is a common superstition utilized by Korean parents to discipline their kids. This is an example of a sign superstition.

Collector’s Name: Clay Han

Tags/Keywords:

  • Korean. Superstition. Frog. Sign Superstition. Blabbermouth. Talking.

The Number 4

Title: The Number 4

General Information about Item:

  • Customary Folklore: Korean Superstition (Bad luck)
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: Korea/Chinese
  • Informant: Sunglim Kim
  • Date Collected: November 5, 2018

Informant Data:

  • Sunglim Kim was born and raised in Seoul, Korea until the age of 17. Her family origins are Korean. When she was a junior in high school she moved to the United States, and went to high school in Seattle, Washington. She then went to UC Berkeley for her undergraduate degree, went back to work in Korea for a few years, and then came back to the United States to get her masters degree at the University of Kansas, and then went back to Berkeley for PHD. Currently, she is a professor of Korean Art and Culture, in the department of Art History at Dartmouth College. This is her 7th year teaching at Dartmouth College. 

Contextual Data:

  • Social Context:

    As a young girl growing up in South Korea, Sunglim noticed that many of the elevators in buildings were missing the number 4 on the buttons that are to be pressed to go up to different floors. In place of the number 4, Sunglim noticed that many elevators either used the letter “F” or omitted the number all together. She was told by her mother that the number 4 was bad luck, and would not be used in places like elevators, or in buildings to denote the fourth floor. She was told that any use of the number 4 would bring upon her bad luck and even death.

  • Cultural Context: The bad omen surrounding the curse of the Evil eye is undoubtedly one of the most popular and commonly-practiced Greek superstitions. The origins of the Evil Eye date back to 100 AD with the works of Plutarch, a Greek biographer. He claims that the eyes are the primary source of the deadly spells cast by evil individuals. While Plutarch struggled to explain the phenomenon, Pliny the Elder stated that some individuals have the, “power of fascination with the eyes and can even kill those on whom they fix their gaze.” Today, the evil eye superstition exists in distinct variations across cultures, and it is common for believers to make efforts to protect themselves and their families against the curse.

Item:

  • One is cursed with the Evil Eye as a result of another person’s stare, comments, or praises. It is most commonly placed upon someone through a malevolent glare; however, it is possible for an individual to curse himself by looking at his reflection or acting a certain way. The Evil Eye is thought to cause harm, misfortune, and bad luck.

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

Collector’s Comments:

  • The superstition of the number 4 is one that is common in not only Korean culture, but also in Chinese culture. This is a superstition that is still practiced in Korean society today. This is an example of sign superstitions.

Collector’s Name: Clay Han

Tags/Keywords:

  • Korean. Superstition. The Number 4. Bad Luck. Sign Superstition.