Superstitions or Folk Beliefs

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Superstitions or Folk Beliefs
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Superstitions Are also Called

• Folk Beliefs
• Traditional Science
• Conventional Wisdom

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Superstitious Sayings Form

• CONDITIONS (SIGNS OR CAUSES)
• E.G., rubbing chicken skin on a wart and burying
  it
• RESULT
• As the chicken skin decays, the wart will
  disappear
• SOME SAYINGS HAVE CONVERSIONS, WHICH MAY ALTER
  THE RESULT
• If you break a mirror, youll have seven years
  bad luck unless you gather all the pieces and
  throw them into running water.

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Why Folk Beliefs?

• They explain the unexplainable
• Superstitions reflect a desire to have the
  universe make sense, to see a cause-effect
  relations between events
• They reflect our desire to have some power over
  our destinies
• Some are based on the fear of the abnormal.

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Sympathetic Magic James G. Fraziers Theory of
Folk Belief

• Homeopathic magic (The magic of similarity)
• Taking a picture of someone may allow the soul to
  be stolen
• Planting when the moon is waxing.
• Contagious Magic (The magic of touch)
• Buying a wart by rubbing a nickel against it and
  giving it to another person
• Sending healing by means of a handkerchief.
• Woman touching the hem of Jesus garment.

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Two theories that may apply

• Gesunkenes Kulturgut
• Witchcraft
• Astrology
• Survivals

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Collections Worth Noting

• Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina
  Folklore (Vol. 6 7 are superstitions edited by
  Wayland Hand)
• Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from Utah,
  Collected by Anthon S. Cannon, ed. by Hand and
  Talley

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Wayland D. HandOrganizational Pattern

• Cycle of Human Life
• Supernatural
• Cosmology and the Natural World
• Miscellaneous

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Hands Cycle of Human Life

• Birth, Infancy, Childhood
• Human Body, Folk Medicines
• Home, Domestic Pursuits
• Economic, Social Relations
• Travel, Communication
• Love, Courtship, Marriage
• Death and Funereal Customs

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Folk Medicine---Warts

• If a person of opposite skin pigmentation rubs
  the warts, they will disappear.
• Tying a silk thread around the wart
• Using rainwater from a white oak stump
• Holding your palms up to a full moon
• Draw blood from a wart, put it on a kernel of
  corn and feed it to a chicken
• Let a grasshopper nibble at the wart, it will
  disappear.

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Folk Medicine---Other Maladies

• Breaking a Fever or curing a cold
• Stopping hiccoughs
• Curing cold sores
• Curing rheumatism or arthritis
• Curing a hangover

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Weather lore

• Signs of rain or a storm
• Red Sky at night, sailors delight, red sky in
  the morning, sailors take warning. Ring around
  the moon.
• Predictors of a cold winter
• Heavy fur on beavers, skunks, and possums a late
  frost a thick onion skin.

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Birth lore

• How do birthmarks come about?
• How can one choose the sex of a forthcoming
  child?
• How can one discover the sex of a child one is
  carrying?

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Lore of Marriage/Death

• Marriage customs
• Clothing
• Traditions at receptions
• Showers, bachelor parties
• Bride not to see the groom
• Death or Funereal Customs
• Viewings
• Contact with spirits
• Bird flies into the house