Folklore: Stumbling = Death

I collected some folklore for Alan Dundes' class at UC Berkeley. Note the date collected. A day before 9/11. Mary Kate stumbled and death did follow within 24 hours.

Genre: superstition
Irish Mary Kate O’Sullivan, female, late 60s retired farmer’s wife,
Irish-born, Irish-English speaking
Sept 10, 2001
Collected in Daly City, CA (a distant cousin Gerald Sullivan's residence)

 “The one who stumbles (in the grave) is the next to go”
 and a variant,
“they’re grabbing after you.”

My third cousin Mary Kate and her sister came to visit us in America, from Bantry Bay, Co, Cork, Ireland, and we had a big party. As everyone was catching up on who was still alive and who was dead, she stumbled on the doorjamb and the talk gravitated toward stories of death and the supernatural.

What was interesting was that my Irish-born cousins Mary Kate and (Sister? Geraldine? can't remember her name) carefully avoided the words “death” and “grave,” it was suggested with pauses in speech. Mary Kate didn’t elaborate on the saying, it was “understood,” rather than spelled out. Taboo.

When we asked her about it, she meant, stumbling anywhere as opposed to only on graves. This sign superstition seems to be a fairly common one as several of my sources used variants of it. The idea being that you invited death in by stumbling on the graves of the dead.

What intrigued me, this particular saying didn’t even mention the word “grave” at all, so theoretically, the act of stumbling anywhere could be a portent of a death to come. Which made one think about being doubly careful about walking around.

Suddenly the taboo zone of danger exponentially broadened to include everywhere, not just graveyards. So many times when an elderly person falls and breaks a hip, it is the beginning of the end, and many do die within the year. It as if the act of stumbling is akin to dying, and that you’re always a step away from the grave.

And of course, the next day was 9/11

UC Berkeley Folklore Collections
Kroeber Hall, Dr. Alan Dundes