Azores Journal: Terceira, São Jorge

9/27/2001 Rue de Jesús, Praia da Vitória, Terceira, Azores

The streets of commerce, where anything is possible, are always open for business—except in Praia da Vitória,Terceira, which is a US military base. The only thing open 24/7 is the US military base. We meet many interesting people over coffee, in the cafes, the only other establishment open during the day. Shops keep very selective hours, depending upon the whims and vagaries of the proprietor—something we will find out more about later.

Canice Santos photo

The huge black cargo planes en route  to Langley from Kuwait, are the newest model, said retired Air Force pilot and CIA agent, Jim Swain. They were called C Fives, or something like that. He said they come in empty and stop to refuel at the most strategic Air Force Base in the Atlantic, which is also the largest gas station in the Atlantic, he said. He was on a roll and told us many air force stories we could barely follow. He also said, Don't believe in half of what you hear.

Sinead Dinsmore photo

Jim's wife, Nancy Swain, from New Hampshire, who was once a Vanity Fair Cover GIrl, said the coffee was too strong. "You know why the espresso spoons are so small? Because they dissolve after the third cup. Bigger spoons are too expensive." I nearly snort my galoni (galão), a thick sludge of espresso and condensed milk. No fresh milk to be had on the islands. Or fish either. Dried bacalao, or bacalhau, takes some getting used to.

9/28 São Jorge Island. We blew into a rough port after an equally rough crossing from Terceira. Sinead is belowdecks feeding the fish vomit. Not a happy camper.

Around Sañ Jorge, stands of Japanese Cryptomeria, a kind of red cedar, reminds me of our redwoods. There is also a native juniper, Juniperus brevifolia. It's like being in Point Reyes, West Marin, so many familiar faces. Most of the ranchers are from the Azores. Many young men look like twins of John Santos with their distinctive eyebrows. The Irish-Portuguese look is in.

On a small plane headed for Terceira, late afternoon rain building, heavy rain this morning, and every day. Our hosts at the Hotel Australia were suddenly very friendly as we were leaving. It would've been better if it had happened sooner.

Sean and the little girl playing hide and seek, have no need for language in common. I tried to collect some folklore for my class with Alan Dundes, from José Sourez, but his English wasn't up to it. Um boca calada diz tudo, he said. Urbano da Silva was more adventurous. I got one bit of folklore from the taxi driver, Alberto Santo Amaro, who has an apartment to rent. Next time we come to visit, he says.

After ignoring us for almost the entire time we were here, everyone expects us to come back next year. That's the way things are done here. The Portuguese are so reserved at first, they seem hostile, but then we make such silly attempts to speak, they take pity on us and dust off their English or Spanish. I am speaking a weird form of  Portuguese-Spanglish which seems to work but it is harder to understand the Azoreans' replys. I suspect their dialect is different from that of the mainland.

9/30 So how we got to ride a twin prop plane back to Terceira instead of the ferryboat for $40 versus $25, was because the boat owner change the schedule two days early, leaving us stranded in Velas for a week. But our plane to Lisbon is on Monday so this is not an option.

Luckily we were able to get a flight out as this was off-season. Yesterday, we went to check on our return tickets, only to discover that the boat had already left an hour earlier that morning. Our Sunday crossing was canceled.

We spent much time trying to find another boat off the island with no luck I called the airport and they said the flight was full but there was space on Sunday for something like $400. We about fainted. I told the taxi driver our problems he said not to worry and he took us to the airport. And got us a ride out of Dodge. Aberto Santo Amaro, was our official living santo. He got us off island when no one else could.

Words from the Portuguese: mosquito!

Intro to Folklore, Dundes, Medieval Welsh Language & Lit., Kla

Medieval Welsh Language & Literature; 
Prof. Kathryn Klar   (audited)
FALL 2001: Celtic Studies146A (4 units), 

A selection of medieval Welsh prose and poetry from medieval Welsh manuscripts: Culhwch and Olwen, the earliest Arthurian tale in any vernacular language, and Aneirin?s Gododdin, which has the earliest reference in the vernacular to King Arthur.  ther texts will include the Mabinogi and poems, The Gododdin (Canu Aneirin).Texts will be read, all or in part, in Middle Welsh; for those works read in extracts, translations of the entire work will be available. In-class translations will normally form part of each class and a reader will be made available. Grading based upon class participation, and final paper.

TEXTS:

Dafydd ap Gwilym

Owein, Chwedyl Iarlles Y Ffynnawn

Bran

Pwyll Pendeuic Dyuet

Manawydan uab Llyr,(White Book, Rhydderch) Patrick Ford

Lear and His daughters (Red Book of Hergest), Strachan

Cyfranc Lludd a Llevelys, Ifor Williams

Intro to Early Welsh, Strachan

For some reason, I didn't do so well in the class. The events of 9/11 made me ADD; I don't even remember doing a paper.

            ...............................................

Intro to Folklore

Prof Alan Dundes  
FALL 2001: ANTHRO 160A  (4 units),
(Cross-registered, SFSU, grade A)

TEXTS:

The Study of American Folklore, Harold Brunvand

International Folkloristics, ed. Alan Dundes

Folklore Matters, Alan Dundes

Holy Writ as Oral Lit, Alan Dundes

The Study of Folklore, Alan Dundes

Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder, Alan Dundes,

Plus reader, reserved readings.
I collected and annotated over 60 pieces of folklore from informants in Portugal, Ireland, and California. They are in this blog and also in the Folklore Archives, Kroeber Hall, where Ishi once lived. I loved this class, I never wanted it to end. I am grateful for the time I got to spend with Alan; Neil was a special pet of Alan's, so we spent many an hour jawing  in Alan's office. Neil called him Papa Dundes. Alan's heart was big as the world.  WWDS has become my motto.

If I hadn't gone to Portugal right after 9/11, chances would be pretty good I would've dropped out of school. I was a bad state, no focus, no stamina, etc. So maybe this class saved me.

I eventually plan to transcribe my class notes, so this is a placeholder. A reminder. —MH 11/2015

SANTOS folk narrative

SANTOS FAMILY FOLKLORE as if told by Jimmy's grandson, Sean

(We pieced this family folklore together while we were in the Azores, and I added bits to it right after we returned. It's a story for my 1st cousin once removed, Sean Dinsmore, who was a child at the time. Now Sean is 21. I transcribed the folklore as if told from Sean's point of view, so he would have a family record for later. (I was taking a monologue class at the time....I did one for each family name. I was planning to use them in a monologue in several voices, since I couldn't use them for my folklore class.)

At the time, I was desperate to fill my required 40 bits of collected folklore for my anthropology professor, Dr. Alan Dundes' folklore class at UC Berkeley, and this unexpected piece came out of the collecting process. 

My informants were my aunt Canice, who was married to Jimmy Santos, and her daughter, my cousin, Sinead Dinsmore, who was Jimmy's step-daughter. So it all came from second-hand informants. I wasn't sure how to clarify the information from two sources.  It was disjointed, Sinead and Canice would begin a story, we'd be interrupted, then, out of the blue, hours or days later, they'd finish the story.

Alan Dundes said he only wanted first-hand informants, in their own authentic language structure, replete with hem-haws, ahems, and warts. So I wasn't able to use this piece. Then I changed the story, to be read as if told from Sean's point of view. I have the original fragments in my journals, but they are fragments, not contiguous.

How I collected the stories: We were traveling together, over a period of a month, In September, right after 9/11. The fragments were collected in San Francisco, Boston, Azores, London—in hotel rooms, boats, and planes. The stories are fragments, as they were always interrupting each other. A tape recorder would've come in handy. Or not. Canice was on a pilgrimage to the land of Jimmy's ancestors, in the Azores.

Canice and Sinead were the ones Jimmy told these stories too. And my cousin David, too (I've never collected his Jimmy stories). I heard a few stories too at Thanksgiving dinners. Sadly, Jimmy (James J. Santos in the story) never met his grandson Sean. Jimmy died too soon, at the age of 54, in the 1990s, of heart failure, though his heart was big.

I never finished writing this piece. There were a lot more stories that I didn't capture—Jimmy in Mill Valley, and working in Sausalito, etc. Sinead still tells a few Jimmy stories, and I always mean to write them down, but I never do. If I wasn't trying to upload and post-date my old writing for this blog, this piece might have languished in cyberspace forever. Several of my old files from 2000 are corrupted, with bits missing. This blog is an attempt to rescue old files.

Regardless of how this memoir was captured, and transcribed, it does chronicle the times. The story was as true as I could make it. A record for the future. And now that that little boy I traveled to the Azores with, Sean, has a son, Jameson, perhaps it's time to give Sean this small piece of his past, now that he's a father, himself. —MH 11/20/2015)

As if told by Sean Dinsmore:

Great-grandpa John J. Santos and great-grandma Bernice D. Santos were new parents to my grandpa, James J. Santos. Great-great grandma Desalla didn’t approve of how her grandson was being cared for. She took it upon herself to whisk James home to her house. He lived with his grandparents until he was ready for school. 

One day his mother decided it was time, and brought him home. His grandmother would be an important figure in his growing up. He often went fishing with his Uncle James and played in Sausalito amongst the boats. His father took his favorite car and sold it without his permission, because Great-grandpa needed the money. This bothered James for the rest of his life, so he supported his sons when they bought their first cars.

During the Big Fire on Mount Tam in the ’40s, Grandpa told stories. How his father worked on the Fire Crew and all the men. The canteen service that worked the fire, the giant amount of food they served. Grandpa was a small child and the portions of steak and chicken were huge massive servings. These men worked long and dangerous hours that seemed longer and they were filled with emotion. This was a defining memory of his childhood.

Great-uncle Jimmy was a fisherman during his youth, and when he was older, he took men sport fishing. The sea was his environment and he fished and worked the sea his whole life. He lived in Mill Valley with Sally in his parents’ house where Great-great-grandma lived. Stories of Grandpa coming home from school crying and sad because the kids were mean. Great-uncle Jimmy telling James to stick-up for himself.

The next day he came home with a smile on his face. The story is that Grandpa James didn’t back down from the bullies and so his battle was over. Grandpa had problems with discrimination his whole life because he was dark, not black but not pure white. So kids who didn’t know him would think wrong thoughts. Adults that he worked with often mistook his ancestry and assumed it wrong.

The Azore Islands is were my great-great-grandpa was from. The Azore Islands were discovered in the 14th century by the Portuguese and Europeans. My mother and grandmother and godmother went with me to the Azores a few years ago. When we were there, we saw volcanic rock beaches. The landscape is similar to Ireland with fields marked with stone fences. We saw a farmer riding his donkey from the corn field with the fresh corn under his bottom. 

The Soares and Bettencourts and Desallas are names in my family tree. My father John, and uncle James would fit right in with their dark hair and eyes, though they're half-Irish. My father John, is very tall—6’5,” and for his heritage, he’s a little big—with size 15 shoes, a little hard to find. 

After the Azores, we went to Lisbon, and to Fatima, a religious site. Then we went to London, England, and stayed in Maidenhead. In “Harry Potter” they show the train station Mom and Grandma took me through. We visited Buckingham Palace and Westminister Abbey as well as Harrod’s department store. The lemonade was very expensive.

Toofta (folklore)

I grew up with a Norwegian prankster named Toofta. Our next-door neighbors, the Haugen sisters from Seattle, observed many Old World Norwegian customs, and also drank like Vikings, hitting the bottle after breakfast was not unheard of during the holidays. We pretended we didn't notice when their drinks went missing, we played along with them looking for Toofta, an invisible wight (similar to our leipreachán), who had a fondness for screwdrivers and eggnog.

Toofta is an invisible singularity of a wight—he is not in the internet, he's unlisted. Perhaps that's a good thing. He's a thief with a fondness for booze. Perhaps he's a Nisse, a Vittra (but they're plural social beings) or a singular entity, Tomte.

"Other names are tuftekall, tomtegubbe or haugebonde, all names connecting the being to the origins of the farm (the building ground), or a burial mound." 

Tomt means house, or farm loft.

What excites me is finding the word: tufte-kall. Toofta, is that you? He was associated with Christmas.... And perhaps Toofta was the Haugan sisters' own personal wight. Haugkall means mound man... Think Harry Potter's house-elf, Dobbin.

I was about 4 or 5 years old when I first heard about Toofta. He was generally associated with theft of food or drinks. He was most active during the Christmas holidays, when we were baking cookies.

I wrote more formally about him here (with this new addition) for Alan Dundes' folklore class.
Folklore: Foodways, saying, a food thief/ house sprite. But that post is far away from my Marconi Station post.

The Haugen's parents came from Bergen, if I remember correctly, Janet, Sally (who was simple), Einer, Borg and Agnes grew up in Seattle in a Norwegian-speaking household. I went to visit their family in Seattle, they had a big house on a hill overlooking Puget Sound. Einer must've lived in that house with his sons David and Ken. (I wrote about Ken here: Puget Sound). Last time I saw the Haugen boys was 1981.

Janet lived at their summer home on Vashon Island, taking care of Sally. They had an uncle Otto who lived in Norway, and I remember when he came to visit at Agnes's place. He didn't speak a word of English, but he also mentioned Toofta. They observed many Norwegian customs, some of which I've inherited by osmosis.

Interpretation of Fairy tales, von Franz

Maureen Hurley Dec. 2, 2001
Anthro. 160A  Prof. Dundes

INTERPRETATION OF FAIRY TALES
Marie Louise von Franz
© 1970, Spring Publications, Dallas, TX

In selecting a text to read for a book report for this Folklore class, I read several books, including Henry Glassie’s “Irish Folk History,” and Vance Randolph’s “Pissing in the Snow,” both great collections of folk narrative, but I chose Dr. Marie Louise von Franz’s Interpretation of Fairy Tales because it represented an old albatross around my neck—a text I had tried to read when it was first released, but I failed—miserably.

Why I am discussing my relationship to the book is that I have folklore attached to it, and I wished to explore why the information in this classic text eluded me. I wish to slay an albatross. I will begin with a discussion about my previous relationship to the text and apply what I have learned in hindsight.

In the 1970s, I was a visual artist, interested in imagery and the subconscious. What was popular at the time was Jungian dream imagery. When I was in my 20s, I passively read the text, I hadn’t yet learned to actively engage in dialogue with the author—to look for and to challenge basic—if not hidden—assumptions. Call it subtext. Someone once said: “Your college education is a success if you graduate with shit detectors intact.” 

My former employer, Jungian enthusiast and occultist, Alice Kent (Kentfield, Marin), was an acquaintance of von Franz’s, and she often cited Jung’s ideas on dreams and personality structures. Some of it made sense, but I didn’t seem to have the cultural map to comprehend it. 

I dearly loved fairy tales (and folksongs) and wanted to know more about them. Von Franz’ text merely reinforced my feelings of inadequacy: I didn’t GET it. (It would be another 10 years before I was diagnosed with dyslexia; but by then, ever the auto-didact, I’d pulled myself up by my bootstraps and had become a literate omnivore). 

This was during the seminal era of what was later to be dubbed, “The New Age.” I was dissatisfied with the popular culture gurus: Joseph Campbell, Robert Graves, Fritz Perls—I felt cheated but I didn’t know why. And there’s the rub. And now, revisiting von Franz’s book some 30 years, later, I find myself better able to argue with many of von Franz’s basic tenants: especially Jung’s theory of collective unconscious, and on women’s roles.

Dr. von Franz, a student of Jung’s, delivered a series of lectures at the Carl Jung Institute in 1963. The bulk of Interpretation of Fairy Tales was transcribed from seminar notes; the book is divided into six sections including theories of fairy tales, myths and archetypes, psychological interpretation, and three case interpretations of a fairy tale, “The Three Feathers.” In 1970, Von Franz added an essay on shadow, animus and anima, and a bibliography, plus a spurious transcript of an interview.

It is difficult to determine who Dr. von Franz’ s audience is: whether her primary impetus is to defend a much maligned Jung, to offer analytical tools to Jungian psychologists, or to interpret fairy tales themselves as folklore. Who is her audience? Popular culture (the lay student), or psychologists? 

I found that as a folklore student, though there were ideas that enraged me, I couldn’t dismiss her work out of hand. There is material that is of use to the folklore student interested in collecting European fairy tales—specifically on the Germanic marchen.

In Interpretation of Fairy Tales, Dr. Von Franz begins with the impulses of how/why a fairy tale originates, and its function. Hero as abstract stereotype, tale teaches a moral lesson. 

What I found useful is her deconstruction of fairy tales into discrete units with diagrams. And her exploration of fairy tale tropes; for example: weak king, three sons, no rightful heir apparent. Which prince is best suited? Three tasks. Denial of task by elder sons, but youngest/dumbest wins kingdom, girl, etc. Uses of magic feather, ball, sphere to lead youngest son to the underworld. Missing functions and the seeking of balance between primal powers—whether it be fertility, masculinity/femininity, etc.

Dr. von Franz discusses how, when she doesn’t understand a fairy tale, she uses myth as parallels “because the greater closeness to consciousness of the myth material” gives her an idea about the meaning. (p. 18). 

She strongly advocates using as many variants of a fairly tale as possible, to understand their meaning, and in her bibliography, she lists Sith Thompson’s Tale Type indexes (but dislikes the cryptic annotation). She writes that myth is rooted in cultural context, and how it is “integrated into the body of conscious knowledge of that nation.” (p. 19).

I was fascinated with her discussions of various motifs. But when she tracks motifs from different cultures, and symbolically grafts them onto a tale from another culture—it is interesting but I would be wary of her synopses because, as she rightly points out, symbolism is a highly idiosyncratic classification system that varies from person to person and culture to culture. 

This stance is ironic in that she (rightly) lambastes the likes of Robert Graves and Joseph Campbell for being generalists. (The “everything is related to everything” theory.) With that in mind, unfortunately, one gets a whiff of the dirty laundry between Jung and the popular icons of the times, and of the rivalry between Jung and Freud than to folklore itself.

I am reminded of poet Bob Hass’ line from “Meditation at Lagunitas” (written ca. 1970), where he warns the poet against the danger of generalization: “each specific erases from the clarity of a general idea.” 

My criticisms of von Franz’s Interpretation of Fairy Tales revolve around the weakest link of Jung’s theory—that of a common collective unconscious. In order to maintain the late Jung’s pandemic generalism, she often forces her many sound insights into another kettle of fish, thin and they lose something in the process Von Franz compounds this flaw by using a Germanic cultural map for all European (and by extension, world) culture.

As a non Anglo-Saxon, I find some of her statements exclusionary. What about non Indo European cultures? For example, she uses the motifs of the king’s white horse and fog as symbols of Wotan/death, and giantesses washing clothes/weather.

 In Celtic mythology white horses are not Wotan’s symbolic transporting the dead to Valhalla, they are a sacral regnal representation and fertility rite of the great horse goddess, Rigatona/Epona/Rhiannon as kingmaker. 

This motif is annotated in Gerald of Wale’s 12th century account of visiting Ireland. Fog is a Celtic trope of entering the Otherworld, and animals with red hair, ears are Otherworld beings. These motifs are warnings that the hero is out of his element.

Finally, though this is a minor point of contention, at the other end of the spectrum, von Franz claims as a German custom, at midsummer festivals “throughout the Germanic agricultural region, people roll the fiery wheels down the mountains....(p. 115). 

In that my great-grandfather practiced this custom in Co. Cork, Ireland, during the 1860s to the 1890s, I would suggest that this is an Indo-European custom, not Germanic (or Swiss). I point these details to suggest that one should read her text with a critical, if jaundiced, eye and not to take her hypotheses at face value, though they do offer an insight into the German psyche as to the interpretation of Germanic fairy tales.

Von Franz makes some interesting remarks about Hitler’s inadequate psychic map, and post W.W.II Germany. But she doesn’t go far enough, as if she were afraid to delve in too deep. And I think her basic assumptions on women’s roles and desires, are off the old patronymic map. In several passages, von Franz often doesn’t distinguish whether she’s referring to fictitious women in fairly tales or to real women of the 1960s. A minor detail, but a wrong reading profoundly changes the context by which to read /interpret her ideas.

In her final essay on shadow, anima and animus, Dr. von Franz suggests that modern woman retains certain negative “animus” traits, and is unintegrated and therefore, is dissatisfied. But von Franz neglects to mention that fairy tales she cites as psychic templates were composed by men centuries earlier. Therefore the relatively few fairly tales about women are indeed exceedingly negative in nature—as their function was to ensure that women remained pliable and docile and unopinionated within the confines of a society long since gone. 

Ironically, if one were to hypothetically apply some of her observations onto herself, she too might be classified as “negative animus.” It would have been interesting if Von Franz had broadened her lens to include some of the studies of women’s roles during the 1970s when she compiled this manuscript, and again when she amended the book in 1978, instead of leaving it chained to the albatross of 1950s philosophy. 

 In revisiting this text, I discovered my own metaphoric albatross was merely an overweight, flightless seagull paddling around within the confines of a small pond after all.

Folklore: Foodways, saying, a food thief/ house sprite

Genre: Folk Saying/Foodways, Norwegian (myself)
December 4, 2001
“Toofta took it”

Our next-door neighbor Agnes, in Forest Knolls, West Marin Co., Ca, was Norwegian-American and in the mid-1950s, when I was a young child, I learned many Norwegian customs from her. Agnes Haugen Vincilione, in her late 40s, was married to a sea captain, Lucien Vincilione, who was away at sea most of the year, and so to occupy herself, she took solace in the afternoon with bourbon on the rocks.

Whenever her drink got low, which it invariably did, she always blamed an invisible Norwegian troll called Toofta, for stealing, or finishing her drink. Of course, this was an excuse to crack open the bourbon jug that was kept under the sink, to pour herself another drink, to raise her glass to Toofta and say, “Skøl pifiskin,” (a salutation that means cheers/ health & fish!). Apparently Toofta had a powerful thirst. Since I was only five years old at the time, I thought Toofta was real, and though I tried to keep my eyes open for this thieving drink-napper, I never spotted him.

Agnes had an elder sister, Borghild, or Borg Haugen, who lived in San Jose; she visited every weekend and she too blamed Toofta for stealing things, not only drinks but food as well—especially Norwegian cookies. I knew Toofta had a sweet tooth and liked his bourbon, but not lutefisk (jellied fish). I imagined he looked like a leprechaun but stockier, because he was a troll; he dressed in Norwegian clothes.

Borg “adopted” me and I remember visiting the family home in Seattle. Borg and Agnes had two sisters, and a brother, Einer; it was a Norwegian-speaking household—their parents and uncle Otto didn’t speak any English. Janet and her mentally retarded sister, Sally lived at the family summer home on Vashon Island, and Einer, in Seattle. They too blamed Toofta for missing things.

Though I was skeptical, Toofta stood a good chance of being more real than Santa Claus—whom I knew was a fraud, because there was a Santa was on every street corner in the City ringing bells at the same time. (Besides, he couldn’t fit down the stovepipe).

Toofta was especially busy during the holidays when there was baking to be done. We made krumkaker, a thin, rolled conical waffle with scrolled designs embedded in the wafer, which he seemed especially fond of; wreath-shaped spritz, and cardamom-flavored fatiman twists—which I hated the flavor of. As far as I was concerned, Toofta could have them all. Naturally, with his sweet tooth, Toofta also took my first tooth, but he didn’t leave me a kroner under the pillow.

When I was 9, Borg gave me a krumkaker iron she brought back from Norway, and some 30 Christmases later, I’m still making krumkakers for my aunts & cousins. Since my family is Irish-American, it’s odd that we’ve picked up a Norwegian custom and adopted it as a family tradition. My cousins insists that eating krumkaker is an integral part of their Christmas experience.

Folklore: Extra Dinner Guests

Genre: Proverb, British-American (myself) November, 22, 2001
“Wherever McGregor sits, he’s always head of the table.”

As two dozen of us sat down to Thanksgiving dinner this year out in the yard like pilgrims, having outgrown the house because another family had joined us, my uncle was late at arriving to the table. His wife, my aunt “Toddy” repeated the family saying, “Wherever McGregor sits, he’s always head of the table.”

I first remember hearing this saying in the late 1950s when I was around eight or nine years old—as we sat down for Thanksgiving dinner in Forest Knolls, Ca.

Because my grandmother who raised me, (Jennie Walsh Reilly., born in 1893, Co. Cork, Ireland), had a large family of eight children—who also had children of their own—Thanksgivings were a huge madhouse affair with my ten cousins (whose ranks later swelled to 18) at the little table, and aunts and uncles with spouses galore sitting at the big table—it was a sea of people, plates and chairs.

 How we were supposed to fit McGregor into all this, and who McGregor was, I wasn’t sure. But invariably some unexpected guest came to the door as we sat down and was squeezed in at the extra plate. I confused the two customs and thought the plate was for McGregor.

My grandmother would always be the last one to sit down—which was always at the head of the table. Why would she say this when she was already at the head of the table? And as she sat down, she’d say: “Wherever McGregor sits, he’s always head of the table.” 

I wasn’t too sure who McGregor was. She wasn’t a McGregor, she was a Walsh-Sullivan, but for years I figured he was an ancestor or relation of sorts. But he was Scottish and we were Irish. Even though a great-aunt married a Scotsman (Ward), I wasn’t too sure where McGregor fit into the scheme of things. I remember once worriedly looking up at the Reilly and Walsh family coats of arms on the wall, wondering what his crest would look like—maybe with a turkey or a plate in it.

I confused and conflated the saying of McGregor with another custom we had which was to set an extra plate at the table for the unexpected guest—an uninvited guest arriving during the holiday was considered to be good luck. 

As I was collecting this folklore, my aunts explained to me the custom of “George” the mythical extra guest. I’d heard about “George, but never understood that they thought the extra place was for him as well, as my grandmother didn’t tend to use the saying. She sometimes mentioned McGregor. I remember her once annotating it with a reference to Elijah as someone unexpectedly arrived at the door in time for dinner. 

Part of my confusion with McGregor/George had to do with the fact that I had to sit with the ever swelling ranks of little kids and I wasn’t allowed to join the big table until I was about ten. My birthday fell on Thanksgiving that year, I was allowed to join the adults. I remember puzzling over McGregor.

Interestingly enough, when I explained my confusion about McGregor and the extra plate, my aunt Jane, 73, went ballistic and thoroughly chewed me out with a character assassination which left us all stunned as I was explaining to my family that what made folklore unique was that there were variations in folklore and that this was my own (if flawed) variation. I don’t know why she got so angry, but that made it impossible to probe deeper into the origins of McGregor.

I had to later re-interview my other aunts and cousin in order to get their opinions as to what they thought it meant. I think Jane was threatened by the process of analysis of the folklore which they rejected the idea that McGregor had something to do with Scots thriftiness and stinginess, though they did mention freeloaders and free meals. 

My aunt “Toddy” said the association with McGregor was “so nobody would feel bad wherever you sat because you might get shifted from your place if a stranger came.” We all learned to associate McGregor with the extra plate.

I always thought my grandmother’s usage of McGregor had to do with the famous betrayal and slaughter of the Scottish Highland McGregor clan, invited to the rival Campbell clan’s stronghold for a feast at Glencoe, then killed by the treacherous Campbells—a horrific breach of Celtic hospitality. She’d often use “The Campbells are coming” as a threat. I thought she was honoring the slain McGregors, they’d always be welcome at our table. But when we looked up this story, we discovered the McDonalds were slaughtered in 1692 by the Campbells, not McGregor.

The idea of resurrecting clanship may not be far off the mark. I think my grandmother, as acting head of the Reilly clan, abdicated her personal role, and stood in place for the absent chieftain (hence the mythical McGregor), since her husband had died in the 1950s. My grandfather, as the eldest surviving male Reilly (a sept of the O’Neils), had the legal right to claim the family holdings in Co. Longford, Ireland, but he chose not to do so.

Note Bene: Looking McGregor up in Scottish and British proverb sources yielded nothing, but when I flipped through Archer Taylor & Bartlett Jere White’s “American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880,” (Harvard, 1958), while looking up “shank’s mare,” another favorite of my grandmother’s, I stumbled upon: “Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.” The quote is listed as Emerson’s Works 1, 105, (p. 232), but I suspect it’s much older than that. This makes our McGregor an interesting variation indeed.

UC Berkeley Folklore Collections

Kroeber Hall, Dr. Alan Dundes

On Sáami Culture

This thread was a rambling Facebook post with a friend on Sáami culture. Not quite a blog, and I'm not quite willing to let go of the information and shape it into a piece. But we uncovered a wealth of information in one thread in our wanderings. Note: not edited!

What the Norwegians (and all of Scandinavia—including Russia) did to destroy Sáami culture is similar to what England did to Irish and Welsh (and Native American) cultures. Neo-colonialism at its worst. Sáami are (Caucasian) First Peoples. ...Their language is Altaic (or Uralic)—not Indo-European.

You have heard one Sáami singer—Joni Mitchell! And Mari Boine is awesome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sápmi_(area)

The Finns are sometimes considered to be a First People who lost much their culture to Christian Sweden with forced conversion in the Middle Ages, but many peripheral cultures willingly accepted Christianity and blending their cultures - until the Church objected.

Tho Sáamii and Fins share a linguistic connection, the Finns don't seem to be a First Peoples. One would have to include Basque into that mix. Linguistically, Finnish is related to the other Baltic-Finnic languages Estonian and Karelian. Genetically, Finns are a homogeneous group with a genetic heritage in common with other European ethnicities. The mtDNA markers of Finnish people do not differ from those of other European ethnicities. Hungarians (87%) and Finns (90%) are definitely closer to Europeans. Lapps/Sáami, by comparison, are 50% European.

Tho, like Sáamii, Finns (aka Fenni, Phinnoi, Finnum, and Skrithfinni / Scridefinnumin in the ancient texts) are present throughout Scandinavia & Russia (Kvens, Tornedalians, Karelians, Veps, Ingrians or Izhorians). A lot of controversy tieing Finns with Lappi/Sáami—which is an old school of anthropological thought,

"it has been suggested that the separation of the Baltic-Finnic and the Sáami languages took place during the 2nd millennium BC, and that the proto-Uralic roots of the entire language group date from about the 6th to the 8th millennium BC." Because there are nine Sáamii dialects—some mutually unintelligible—but related through the dialectic continuum— this suggests an ancient peoples.

There is also oral tradition suggesting the Finns moved into Jutland from the East. They weren't First Peoples in Finland. The original home of Finns "was in west-central Siberia." Or they were from central and northern Europe, moving north after the Ice Age. But even that idea is controversial.

The Finnish word lape, which in this case means 'periphery' could be the origin of Lappi. (The old us vs, them paradigm.) The Sámii were considered heathens, lost from God. You gotta sift thru a LOT of flaming racism when reading about the Sáami...

The nomadic Sáami are the earliest of the contemporary ethnic groups represented in the area, they are consequently considered an indigenous population of the area. Their relative isolation in the Middle Ages protected them from the bubonic plague.

During the 19th c. was when Norway began to stamp out Sáamii culture. "The strongest pressure took place 1900 to 1940, when Norway invested considerable money and effort to wipe out Sáami culture," You couldn't buy or rent land id you didn't speak Norwegian. After years of forced assimilation, Sáamii culture is reviving. The Sáami were recognized as an indigenous people in Norway in 1990.

I had a Lappi friend—she gave me an earful...and studying folklore at UC Berkeley also put this info on my radar...Finns are extremely nationalistic—and invented an epic founding saga Kalevala in the 19th c. (fakelore—from real folklore) so you really have to read carefully there. I'll shut up now.

Nik Gervae  Exhibits at the National Museum of Finland indicated that prehistoric continental or even Scandinavian peoples may have displaced the original Finno-Ugric peoples of south Finland, while adopting their language and culture. That far back, and considering migrations after the Ice Age, I just don't know how to apply the term "First People".

Finnish nationalism stemmed more from their precarious position between Sweden and Russia than their relations with the Sáami, but it's certainly true that the big nationalist revival saved their remaining scraps of folklore from the grave with Elias Lönnrot's and other ethnologists' collection of rune-songs, which are vaguely related to joik. He assembled the wide-ranging set into Kalevala, a coherent narrative that had not previously existed, and Kanteletar, which was all the rest of the material. (Estonia managed a similar preservation/reconstruction with their Kalevipoeg.) It's that culture that nearly got exterminated by European culture, so I'm really not sure how to qualify it relative to Sáami, considering the records we have of prehistory are largely in grave objects and in peoples' genes....

Nick—you've more than covered the basics here—good job! I didn't delve into the Kavelala because that's a whole 'nother can o worms! But there's no stong evidence that Finns and Sáami are from the same peoples—they may have been enemies as the so called Finnish saga suggests. The Finns probably displaced the Sáami—based on linguistics alone!

Romantic Nationalism was central "in post-Enlightenment art and political philosophy. From its earliest stirrings, with their focus on the development of national languages and folklore, and the spiritual value of local customs and traditio...ns, to the movements that would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for "self-determination" of nationalities...

the romantic ideal; folklore developed as a romantic nationalist concept. The Brothers Grimm were inspired by Herder's writings to create an idealized collection of tales, which they labeled as authentically German. ...

Romantic nationalism inspired the processes whereby folk epics, retold legends and even fairy tales, published in existing dialects, were combined with a modern syntax to create a "revived" version of a language. Patriots, it was expected, would then learn that language and raise their children speaking that language, as part of a general program to establish a unique identity. "Landsmål", which is the foundation of modern Norwegian, was the first language to follow this program, and it was joined by modern Czech, Slovak, Finnish and later by Hebrew as nationalizing languages. ...

Romantic nationalism is inherently exclusionary, and that, in the 20th century, proved to be a tragic flaw.....

The concept of a "national epic", an extensively mythologized legendary work of poetry of defining importance to a certain nation, is another product of Romantic nationalism. ...

Beowulf, Macphearson's Ossian and the Kalevala...were examples of new national poetry – forged either out of whole cloth, or from cobbling together folk poetry,...

linguistic and cultural nationality, colored with pre-genetic concepts of race, were employed for two rhetorical claims consistently associated with romantic nationalism to this day: claims of primacy and claims of superiority. Primacy is the claimed inalienable right of a culturally and racially defined people..."

(That vein of this thought directly contributed to the "superiority of the Aryan race...")

"The idea was that Germans should "naturally" rule over the lesser peoples. Romantic nationalism, which had begun as a revolt against "foreign" kings and overlords, had come full circle, and was being used to make the case for a "Greater Germany" which would rule over Europe."

In the US it played out as The Frontier, Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny—not our most shining moments.

Nik Gervae Yow. But yes, that's what I was saying, the original inhabitants of southern Finland (purporteded migrated from what is now Spain during the ice age), were displaced northward by another people, blond, fair-skinned.

I've been very curious to  learn more about the creation of Kalevala. There's only one good book I know of in English (Pentikäinen's "Kalevala Mythology")...and my Finnish is nowhere good enough yet.

From what I remember—w/o digging out my (really old!) notes—Kalevala is a modern Romantic construct, understand there were no folklore collection rules yet in place, it was very much a product of 18-19th c mindset, some real folklore was us...ed—but it's definitely a collage, a pastiche. An attempt to create a national literature.

Think it was patterned after Jamie MacPhearspn's equally romantic (read nationalistic) attempt at trying to abscond with Irish sagas, by claiming that the Scottish Oissin was the extant story—earlier by 3 centuries.

Sadly, MacPhearson really did collect some old Gaelic verse—but he bowlderized (and plagiarized) so much of it—and then deliberately destroyed the notes, so nothing can be verified.

Point being—the two sagas were modeled on the same construct. We did not study Estonian version. Don't know if it too is a construct. Nothing wrong with that—but claiming it as a national literature was the real problem. More like Oh look I just happened to find this old mss in a trunk or a cave—when in fact, it was a forgery in MacPhearson's case.

Something about the form in the Kalevala—was a giveaway. Can't remember what. Not an ancient form? Anyway, there's been a LOT of misdirection and bad scholarship around it—and I can see in the Wiki articles, the attempts to ameliorate the contradicting schools of thought. Thus confusing everybody even more. Not just grains, but vast piles of salt are needed while reading about it.

Read it for what it is, but don't assume its veracity. Weirdly, Tolkien was attempting to do something similar—create a national English literature. it is said the Simillaron (sp?) is based on the Kalevala...

That's why I posted all that stuff about Romanticism—you (not you, but one has) have to understand the circumstances that spawned it. Romanticism was in direct (antagonistic) reaction to the Age of Reason—I like to think of it as a collective battle of the psyche of modern man. Sorta like The Bible told me so—stance.

As for translations‚ no clue there. I did read it in translation but don't remember who. I found it challenging to read—probably because it is a collage. But Irish medieval mss was really my thing—and the occasional Icelandic saga-for cross reference. The Kalevala was, along with Ossian, when we were studying fakelore. Everybody was doing it—it was all the rage.

Joseph Jacobs, Wendt, and Yeats fall into that category—it's not to say they didn't collect folklore but they sure "improved" it, thus destroying its integrity. Luckily for the Irish—there were all these very real medieval manuscripts to back it up. I took this cool class where we plowed through stacks of books and looked at them as cultural artifacts of Romantic thought. An interesting way to read.

Re  original inhabitants of southern Finland (purporteded migrated from what is now Spain during the ice age), were displaced northward by another people, blond, fair-skinned.


Yeah, I was just reading a variant of that theory—But the Sáamii (who seem to be older than FInns—linguistically, etc.) are pale (and many are blond) tho their skin color is more golden—perhaps belying their eastern heritage. So don't know ow that all fits in. Don't forget there were fair people in Northern Japan—the Ainu...who may be related. (Japanese tried to obliterate them too...) Another wild school of thought!

Nick—this is what I mean by so much misinformation: "The Sáami people, an indigenous race related to North American Indians and Eskimo tribes, were colonized by the Christian Scandinavians." Fail! See what the idea of First Peoples conjures up? Argh!

Finding Toofta

Facebook works in mysterious ways. My Facebook friend, whom I’ve never met in person, Swedish filmmaker, Pamela Robertson-Pearce, posted Christmassy foodie customs on her page which led to my asking her about Swedish folk customs. It was a lutefisk-laden stray thought. 

Long ago, while I was at UC Berkeley, I collected 40 pieces of folklore, and one piece on the Norwegian Christmas impish elf, Toofta, stealer of drinks, was lacking scholarly reference, that is, any backup material. I found nothing in the basement folklore archives of the Dow Library. I sighed, and turned the paper in. Much later, I found a minuscule footnote on Wiki while writing a piece on Marconi Station in 2015. 

Fast forward five years, this morning, first day of Advent, Pamela led me to a gift, gold treasure—the 1881 poem, The Tomten by Viktor Rydberg, based on Swedish folklore. One thing led to another. She said, “In Sweden too we have a Tomte who lives on farms possibly in barns, but he is very much a winter thing. The Tomte in Sweden also brings gifts, but he does errands around the place too. Before Saint Nicholas we had a Julbock, a straw goat ram, who came at Christmas with gifts.” See pagan origins of the yule goat.

Tomten, by Viktor Rydberg

Midvinternattens köld är hård,
stjärnorna gnistra och glimma.
Alla sova i enslig gård
djupt under midnattstimma.
Månen vandrar sin tysta ban,
snön lyser vit på fur och gran,
snön lyser vit på taken.
Endast tomten är vaken….

Of course I don’t understand a word of it. 

My fake transliteration:

Midwinter nights, cold and hard
the stars gleam and glimmer
all over the land
under a midnight sky...
Men? wander without shelter?
snow lies with the ? on the great cliffs
snow lies on the path taken.
Where the Tomten waken.

I looked up Tomte, and was redirected to a Wiki entry, where Tufte, or Toofta, was mentioned. I was chuffed. For decades, I’ve had this little fellow orphaned in my memory banks, with no other reference point, and the reference is Tomten, poem in Swedish by Viktor Rydberg! Full circle.

Apparently Kierkegaard also mentioned the tomte and nisse. How did I not know this? In the farback days when the nissar and the tomte were murderous mischievous farmhands, they needed to be appeased. This is more in line with the toofta that I knew and feared as a child.

I was afraid I was becoming a monopolizing pest on her page, but it was so exciting to find a connection nearly 20 years after I had collected the folklore. Toofta made me do it. And then it was like Christmas, unwrapping all the connections. Tack, Pamela! What a fabulous Advent gift.

Olaus Magnus’s 1555  print,“A Description of the Northern Peoples” an early depiction of a farmhouse spirit in the center, sweeping the barn. He is more in keeping with the current popular cultural version.

Tomtenissar preparing for the children to visit “on detsembris jõululainel ja ootab külla lapsi.” By Swedish illustrator and painter,  Kurt Nüström Stoopendaal (d. July 27, 1965,) Rannarootsi Muuseum, Estonia.

And here is my amended folklore piece on Toofta, aka Tufte. I’m sure Papa Dundes would be proud. To see all the comments, research, and links, visit  my original Facebook post.

Now, where did I put my drink? Tooofta? Apparently I’ve inherited a Norwegian house sprite.

Folklore: Pinky Butler, when a load of hay passes you, make a wish, sympathetic magic

Folklore: When you pass a load of moving hay, make a wish.
Genre: superstition, sympathetic magic; plant husbandry: Appalachia, possibly British origins.
Bonus folklore: family history, a moniker, and a diamond ring
Informant: Donna Champion, female, 64
English/Spanish-speaking Guamanian-Chamorro, Guatemalan, Spanish, French/Norman Irish-American
ESL instructor, Sonoma County, CA
Dec. 9, 2018
Collected in Cotati, CA (in a car on Hwy 116)

I collected a new bit of folklore that arrived by way of Guam, of all places. It probably arrived by way of Texas, possibly originally from Kentucky, or even the British Isles, ca. 1910. The saying was a favorite of Donna Champion's grandfather, Chester Carl, aka "CC," or “Pinky” Butler, who passed it onto his Guamanian daughter, Clara Mae Butler.

Donna and I were driving down Highway 116, when an overladen hay truck was approaching us, coming the other way. She said, Quick! Make a wish. So I did. Then she told me the superstition that her mother, Pinky’s daughter, Clara Mae Butler Champion, who was born on Guam, taught her. Donna said, "Whenever we passed a hay truck, my mother would say: when you pass a load of moving hay, make a wish. It didn't have to be a truck." She also said, "You need to keep the wish to yourself."

I got a few bits of folklore for the price of one, from how the Coca-Cola franchise arrived on Guam, to how Pinky got his Guamanian moniker. Chester Carl, aka C.C. (b. In Sunset, TX, ca., 1884), was a redhead of Norman-Irish descent (by way of Illinois, and W. Virginia); his father, James Berry Butler, a newspaper editor from Illinois, took to drink after Chester’s mother, Melissa Belle Payne, a Baptist who hailed from Rockwell Texas, died in childbirth when he was eight years old).

Living with his three brothers at the relatives didn't pan out, and after Chester finished eighth grade, he ran away from his mother’s extended family. When he was 14, he went to seek his fortune out west. He arrived San Francisco, where he was employed to sell fruits vegetables in a pushcart on Nob Hill. His employer took him in and gave him room and board. When Chester was 18 (ca. 1902), he joined the Navy, and served aboard the USS Pensacola. That's how he wound up on Guam.

Chester "Pinky" Butler of the USS Pensacola, showing off his tats

A fair-freckled, blue-eyed redhead, Chester's fair complexion didn’t fare too well on Guam, he was always sunburned—hence the moniker "Pinky." With the help of his greengrocer savings, which he had converted into a diamond ring he kept hidden in his pillow, he used the ring as collateral, and with that, made a family fortune. Pinky was industrious, he brought a Coke franchise, and seltzer water machines to Guam, and sold American made goods to the Pacific islands. That enterprise became a thriving chain of businesses, Butler's Inc. 

That grubstake ring became an engagement ring for the 17-year-old Ignacia Bordallo, who was from the large Kotla Chamorro clan. They were married on the 8th of January, 1915, in Agat, Guam. They had six children. He was taken a prisoner of war Dec. 8, 1941, and held in Kobe, Japan for the duration of the war. His health was broken. He died on Valentine's Day, 1952, in Oakland, CA. Donna's eldest sister, Connie still has that diamond ring.

The first time my friend Donna remembered hearing the saying, When you pass a load of moving hay, make a wish, was in the early 1960s, was when she was a child. Donna learned it from her mother, Clara Mae (Pinky’s daughter), in Sebastopol, CA. 

What makes this bit of folklore interesting to me is that there were no hay trucks or haywains on Guam, and yet the saying survived three generations. Donna's brother Greg, born in 1952, didn't recall the hay saying, but he did add that his maternal great-great-grandfather, from Spain, raised cattle on Guam.

Apparently the second part of the hay-wish formula was that you couldn’t look back at the passing vehicle either, a condition which my friend said she never learned. I found another account online where you had to lick your thumbs, and snap your fingers/slap your thigh, too. (see my notes below.)

Folklore: Talking & Keeping silence

Genre: Proverb, Portuguese, Azores 

Urbano, Prereirada da Silva, male, 19
English student, electrician
Azores-born, Portuguese-speaking
Terciera, Azores
Oct. 2, 2001 

"Quem tem boca vai a Roma."
(kejm tem ‘bo:ka va; a Roma)
Whoever has a mouth goes to Rome


“My father said to me when I was a little boy, I was talking too much. I was three,” said Urbano, my flatmate on Terciera Island in the Azores, Portugal. Urbano is studying English, and also studying to be an electrician, he is from one of the distant outer islands, Flores.

The Azores, in the mid-Atlantic Ocean are very isolated, the islands spread over a 400-mile radius. They are warmed by the African gulf current, and are actively volcanic. There is an isolation that modern technology has done little to erase as there are only two satellite channels. However many are connected by a cell phone, a program subsidized by the government. As a result of isolated island living, the people are gregarious and helpful, if conservative. And many old customs are well preserved, some dating back as much as 500 years, when the Portuguese settled these islands. 

For example, while we were there, the islanders were readying for the ancient annual festival of the running of the bulls, where bulls are literally let lose in nearby Praia da Vittoria, to run the streets. Everybody chips in to spruce up the town. They paint their houses, board up windows and doors, and most important, they move their cars out of town at the last minute, and the festival begins.

When I asked Urbano what he thought the proverb meant, he answered with: “because the Pope lives in Rome.” This explanation didn’t help me to understand it, so I asked again and he elaborated, “Because we believe in the Pope.” 

Could it be related to Silence is next to holiness/Godliness? 

It's similar to Alberto Santo Amaro's proverb that I also collected:

"Boca calada diz tudo."
(boka kaw’lada, di:z tudo)
[A] mouth shut says everything.

And to an Irish proverb: 

“A mouth is sweet in its silence”
“Is binn béal ina thost”
(iss binn beyal eena host)
it’s (a) melodious mouth in its silence/lull 

(From “Seanfhocail,” M.F. Ó Conchuír, Cló Iar-Chonnachta, 1997, Ireland; p 35, #615). 

Someone else thought that those who talked too much were sent to Rome to be executed, which gives this proverb a medieval twist. Rome was the center of power. This proverb could represent sedition agains the state or authority (parental). 

There is a Russian saying: To keep silence—that runs along that same vein—to stay under the radar of the authorities, the Soviet police. I don't have the Russian aphorism, as it was always translated to me. But this saying is similar: "In the company of strangers silence is safe."

It was interesting trying to collect folklore from Urbano as he was just learning English, and wanted a chance to practice. That's how we met, in the hotel lobby. We used a lot of intermediary methods of communicating, as I speak a passable Spanish, and can say a few phrases in Portuguese. But I am not fluent in either language. We often spoke an admixture of Spanish & Portuguese peppered with English—including pantomime and pictures. So it took three languages, and then some, to collect Urbano's folklore.

UC Berkeley Folklore Collections
Kroeber Hall, Dr. Alan Dundes

Folklore: Water, strength

Genre: Proverb, Portuguese, Azores 
Urbano, Prereirada da Silva, male, 19
English student, electrician
Azores-born, Portuguese-speaking
Terciera, Azores
Oct. 2, 2001

Agua mole em pedra dura
(‘agwa ‘mo-le em pedra durya
water weak the stone strong

tantu bate ate que fura
tantu ba’te ke ‘furya)
but weak that hole


Water may be weak but it can wear down the stone.

“My father said to me when I was six or seven, when I was a student, when I didn’t understand my homework,” said Urbano, my flatmate on Terciera Island in the Azores, Portugal. Urbano is studying English, and also studying to be an electrician, he is from one of the distant outer islands, Flores. His address is Rua do Quartiero, P. Delgada 9970, Santa Cruz, Flores, Azores.

The Azores, in the mid-Atlantic Ocean are very isolated, the islands spread over a 400-mile radius. They are warmed by the African gulf current, and are actively volcanic. There is an isolation that modern technology has done little to erase as there are only two satellite channels. However many are connected by a cell phone, a program subsidized by the government.

When I asked Urbano what he thought the proverb meant, he answered that water was soft but it was constant and if you continue to try to work at something as hard as stone, you can wear down the obstacle. It reminded me of a similar Chinese saying. 

It was interesting trying to collect folklore from Urbano as he was just learning English, and wanted a chance to practice. That's how we met, in the hotel lobby. We used a lot of intermediary methods of communicating, as I speak a passable Spanish, and can say a few phrases in Portuguese. But I am not fluent in either language. We often spoke an admixture of Spanish & Portuguese peppered with English—including pantomime and pictures. So it took three languages, and then some, to collect Urbano's folklore.

UC Berkeley Folklore Collections
Kroeber Hall, Dr. Alan Dundes

Folklore: Proverb: “Actions speak louder than words.” folklore

Genre: Proverb                                                Seán Santos Dinsmore, age 6                                                                                                                                          

                                                                        Oct 1, 2001

                                                                        Fatima, Portugal (restaurant)

“Actions speak louder than words.”

My nephew Seán watched me interview my family for folklore for a month, and apparently he too wanted to get in on the act—which totally floored us. Probably it’s because he’s at the age where he thinks the world revolves around him. 

We—my aunt Canice, her daughter—my cousin Sineád, and her son Seán were in Fatima, Portugal, on a pilgrimage of sorts to the Azores in honor of Canice’s deceased Portuguese-American husband, Jimmy Santos, and we wanted to show Seán his ancestral homeland. 

The timing for our trip was very bad: it was a few days after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks and we were in rough shape in general. Canice wanted to go to Fatima, and after having visited the shrine of “Our Lady of Fatima,” we were reviving ourselves in a coffee shop after having been drenched in a downpour,  After his grandmother, my aunt Canice, had given me a bit of folklore “behind the 8-ball,” he piped up “I have one too.”

Seán said, “At the beginning of school in Miss Martha’s [MacNeil] class, she said to us, ‘actions speak louder than words.’’  Seán is a first grader in a multi-grade classroom at a tiny rural, school in Nicasio, Ca. 

I asked him what he thought it meant. He replied, “because we were screaming kids, because yellow-jackets [wasps] were landed on our burritos on Burrito Day. I slapped a couple of them.” He laughs. “She was trying to get us to stop screaming and we did. And we ate our lunch. I said it was because we were talking too loud.”

I think Seán, despite his age, understood the context of the application and the use of the proverb “actions speak louder than words” perfectly. He was a good informant, and more on-task than some of the adults I interviewed. A boy of action, he did all my work for me!