Folklore: Sign Superstition/Folk Belief , “Dropped, crossed knife, fork, spoon.” folklore

Genre: Sign Superstition/Folk Belief                          

“Dropped, crossed knife, fork, spoon.”                          

                                                                   

1. Sineád Dinsmore, 
September, 8, 2001
2. “Toddy” (Kathleen) Ritter, female                                                        
3. Adrian McGarrity, Irish-born, Irish-English speaking
Oct 6, 2001, in an airplane enroute, Lisbon to London
somewhere over Galicia
4. Neil O’Neill
Dec 7, 2001

We were at my aunt Toddy’s house in Santa Cruz in September. My cousins Sineád, Ceit and I were talking about a family superstitions when we’d drop a knife or a fork. A fork meant a woman, a knife a man and a spoon, a child was to come visiting. 

We decided it was a used as a way of foretelling visitors. And the shapes of the utensils had something to do with their assigned designation. A knife was phallic. A fork had an upper torso, and women traditionally take care of the food preparation. A fork is the principle eating instrument, but babies depend exclusively upon spoons until they train up to forks. The knife is the last to be added to the repertoire.

My Irish informant, Adrian McGarrity, from Belfast, said that he learned from his mother that a fork meant that they would have a woman visitor, a knife meant a man, but they had no connection with the spoon. However he added that “if you cross a knife and fork accidentally, it meant there was going to be an argument or a fight.” 

He also said fighting was also related to an itchy right hand, or nose. I wondered if growing up in a city torn by civil was since 1970 had something to do with the prevalence of fighting images. But he learned these superstitions from his mother, Eleanor Scullion (in her 70s), who grew up in Legoneill, a village outside of Belfast before the Troubles escalated. So they seem to be traditional images.

Scotsman Neil O’Neill said, “if people put two different spoons on top of each other on the same saucer by mistake, it means a christening was coming up. It came from my mother. It’s probably Irish.” His mother lives in Scotland, but is of Irish descent. He thought the superstition had to do with the synchronicity of the event of two people putting the spoons down together like a couple.

Folk sayings, Irish, “Shift your feet, lose your seat,” folklore saying

Genre: Folk sayings, Irish                                      
Sineád Dinsmore,
September, 8, 2001

                                                                       

“Shift your feet, lose your seat,”

“Speak up now, or forever hold your peace.”

Sineád said that the saying, “shift your feet, lose your seat,” was used as method of managing the family pecking order, especially when they were all watching TV and if someone got up to use the bathroom, they’d lose their seat. Apparently there was no way of putting “dibs” back on the seat once you left it. 

Usually, the rule of thumb in our extended family was that someone with full bladder would lay future claim to a soon-to-be vacated seat, which was honored. But in Sineád’s family, that law changed. I think it’s because her mother, my aunt Canice remarried, and the old pecking order rules were suspended when the new family came along.

Sineád, who lives in Nicasio, Ca., said she learned this saying from her mother, Canice, probably when they were living in Petaluma in the 1980s. The family had expanded from herself and one older brother, to a total of four, with the addition of her two half-brothers to the family. As the younger boys grew older, sibling rivalry intensified and crowd control had become a central issue as they all jockeyed for positions of power.

I was more familiar with a somewhat related saying, “Speak up now, or forever hold your peace.” Our Irish-born grandmother, Jennie Walsh Reilly (b. 1893 in Bantry Bay), taught it to me when I was about seven or eight, circa 1960, in Forest Knolls, Ca. She usually said that whenever I waffled on something. Since we had two couches and there was only myself, my little brother and my grandmother in the house, pecking order issues were less severely delineated.

Folk sayings, Irish, “Tea makes pee,” folklore

Genre: Folk sayings, Irish
Sineád Dinsmore
September, 8, 2001        
                                                          

“Drink tea and pee,”

“Tea makes pee,”

“Better a weak bladder than a weak mind.”

“Speak up now, or forever hold your pee [peace],”

Our Irish-born grandmother, Jennie Walsh Reilly (b. 1893 in Bantry Bay), loved her evening sup of tea. Whenever guests came, tea was the necessary prerequisite for a good gab and a visit. Tea after dinner still signals a time for storytelling. 

But strong Irish tea is a powerful diuretic and we’re all a weak-bladderd lot (“better a weak bladder than a weak mind,” my grandmother would sometimes say.) 

The funniest instance Sineád remembers of our grandmother using “Tea makes pee,” was on an unsuspecting young second cousin of ours, Barney O’Reilly—a stranger to the immediate family—visiting from Los Angeles. We were at my grandmother’s house (where I, the interviewer) was raised.

Sineád said, “I remember Grandma telling Barney ‘Tea makes pee,’ as she giggled—she had this funny ‘tee-hee’— and ran to the bathroom. It was in 1975. Barney was surprised, then he laughed.” We knew he was OK then. (It was an impromptu test to see how someone would fit in).

I think “Tea makes pee,” is a variant of the saying I learned from my grandmother at an early age: “Drink tea and pee.” Sometimes she’d get creative with it and invent a new portmanteau saying: “Speak up now, or forever hold your pee [peace].”

Sign Superstition/Folk Belief “Spilled salt” folklore

Genre: Sign Superstition/Folk Belief                           

“Spilled salt”
September, 8, 2001   

1. Sineád Dinsmore                                                     
2. “Toddy” (Kathleen) Ritter

3. Adrian McGarrity, male, 40s
Irish-born, Irish-English speaking

Oct 6, 2001, in an airplane enroute,
Lisbon to London somewhere over Galicia

We were all sitting around the table at my aunt Toddy’s house in Santa Cruz. Someone spilled some salt, so I asked several family members about the superstition of throwing spilled salt over one’s shoulder. Both my cousin Sineád and my aunt Toddy learned about it from their parents at around the same age of six or seven years of age, as did I.  

When it came to tossing salt over a shoulder to ward off bad luck, Sineád was the only contrariwise one who threw it with left hand over right shoulder. The rest of us tossed it right over left. I asked them why they did it. “To ward off bad luck.” I asked what kind of bad luck? “Unspecific.” Or “A spell.”

I decided to collect data further afield. A month later, I met Adrian McGarrity, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, on a plane enroute from Lisbon to London. An excellent informant, if not captive audience, Adrian confirmed the majority rule: “Salt over the left shoulder with the right hand.” He said “It was another thing for not bringing bad luck upon yourself. ‘Make sure you throw a little salt over your shoulder,’ my mother would always say.”

When I asked each of them how they thought this superstition evolved, they said salt was once a valuable commodity (worth more than gold) and to toss spilled salt was to make an offering, to ward off bad luck or “to stop an argument,” an explanation which I’d never heard before. The operative word was valuable. Don't destroy something valuable.

Folklore: Sign Superstition/Folk Belief itching folklore

Genre: Sign Superstition/Folk Belief                           1. Sineád Dinsmore,

“Itchy palms” “Itchy feet”                                             

“itchy nose” “burning/itchy ears”                                    September, 8, 2001

                                                                       

                                                                        2. “Toddy” (Kathleen) Ritter

                                                                        3. Adrian McGarrity, male, 40s

Irish-born, Irish-English speaking

Oct 6, 2001

in an airplane enroute, Lisbon to London somewhere over Galicia

“When you get itchy palms, said my cousin Sineád, holding out her palms, “it means you’re either going to get something or give something away. Left means you’re going to get something, right means you’re going to give something away.” 

Sineád, who lives in Nicasio, Ca., said she learned this saying from her mother, my aunt Canice. Sineád insists that it’s accurate. Canice’s sister, our aunt Toddy, who lives in Santa Cruz, also knew of this superstition ever since she was a young girl in San Francisco in the ‘40s, but she says Sineád has the hands reversed.

Toddy said, “itchy feet means travel, or “you’re antsy.” She thinks she learned these superstitions in the ‘40s from her father, who was from Longford, Ireland. 

She said, “itchy nose: kiss a fool. Itchy ears: someone’s talking about you.” Her daughter Ceit and I have the same versions, but I learned them from my grandmother who is Toddy’s mother. Sineád is the only one who has reversed the order of the hands. But Sineád is left-handed.

I decided to collect data further afield. I met Adrian McGarrity, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, on a turbulent plane ride enroute from Lisbon to London. An excellent informant, if not a captive audience, Adrian gave me the variations which I was hoping to find. 

He said, “itchy palms or hands mean money if it’s the left, and a fight if it’s the right palm. Or get in an argument with someone. Itchy feet means you’re going to walk on strange ground, somewhere you haven’t been. My mother, she would tell me these things.” He’d never heard of “itchy nose, kiss a fool.”

Because Sineád is left-handed, I assumed she switched directions to suit herself. I made a guess based upon the Latin definition: dexter = right; sinister =left. Toddy, Canice, Ceit and I equate good with right, and bad with left. But note how Adrian who is right-handed, has a similar scheme to Sineád’s, left= $ ; right = trouble/loss. Truly a variation. When it came to tossing salt over a shoulder to ward off bad luck, Sineád was the only one with left hand over right shoulder. Adrian’s itchy ear story formula: “left for right; right for spite,” would be interesting to apply.

Folk Saying “That’s for George” 2 folklore

Genre: Folk Speech                                                    
September, 8, 2001

Sineád Dinsmore

“That’s for George”

When my 31-year-old cousin Sineád’s mother, my aunt Canice, mentioned the saying, “That’s for George” Sineád added, “My mom always taught me to cook with George in mind.” This meant for example, that whenever Sineád peeled potatoes, she always peeled an extra portion for “George.” 

Sineád, who lives in Nicasio, Ca., is the second-born child, and only girl in a family of four: she has one older brother and two younger half-brothers—all are good trenchermen. 

My aunt Canice said the contexts for using the saying, “That’s for George” were varied, though they seemed to revolve around food, and were possibly related to Depression lore. Sineád  agreed that this was a way of ensuring that there’d be enough food to be had for dinner. The idea of plenty and enough: go leor (galore) was important. 

(Collector’s note: my grandparents’ families survived the Great Irish Potato Famine of 1848, and we have many odd quirks associated with food, including sharing and saving food. We seem to have a great residual fear of running out of food. Unfortunately, it’s a trait that has been passed on, we’re all overweight, and we all overbuy and hoard rations “for a rainy day.” The end result is that the stored food eventually goes to waste. 

My grandmother seemed to carry some residual guilt in that her family survived the Famine when so many had died... she often used to talk about how they were starving, reduced to eating grass, their mouths stained green...) then she’d give a small sob of grief, and she, a stoic who showed little emotion.)

The saying, “That’s for George” was traced back to Sineád’s and my grandfather (Canice’s father), Bernard Reilly, born in 1890, Granard, Co. Longford, Ireland, who often referred to “George.” Where he got the character from, we don’t know. But he did work for the San Francisco County jail and I speculate that he probably picked up many sayings from cops and inmates. 

According to J.H. Brunvand in “The Study of American Folklore,” (Norton, 1966), that this modern proverb, is possibly a variation of using a saint’s name, “Let George do it,” may have referred to “the tradition of calling railroad porters by this name.” (p. 101).  

The man who previously owned our summer home in Forest Knolls, Marin Co., Ca., was a railroad man for the Northwestern Pacific line and he was an acquaintance of my grandfather’s. They allegedly met during the 1906 earthquake where my grandfather was in charge of setting up tent cities. The house was entirely supported with purloined railroad ties, which were later recycled into raised retainer walls (nearly 100 years later, they’re still there), and for decades, we dug up railroad spikes in the yard. 

The railroad line that terminated in Cazadero, in Sonoma Co., was a mile away from the house, on what is now Sir Francis Drake Road.

Folklore: Neck Riddle (blame)

Genre: Neck Riddle                                                    
September, 8, 2001

Sineád Dinsmore

“Who did it?” “I dunno did it.”

At six or seven years of age, my cousin Sineád, who lives in Nicasio, CA., learned to redirect parental blame away from herself and onto a hypothetical character named “I dunno,” rather than onto herself or to her brothers. She is the second-born child, and only girl in a family of four: she has one older brother and two younger half-brothers who were always getting into mischief. More often than not, neither parent was home, in San Rafael, CA, during the day. Her stepfather Jimmy drove a tow truck, and her mother worked on an assembly line. Sineád and her older brother were expected to take care of the younger boys after school. And of course, since no one was really in charge, things happened, there was ample opportunity for mischief. And a need for a scapegoat.

Sineád explained how the custom began, “Whenever the last cookie was taken, or if somebody forgot to clean up after themselves, or something got broken, we’d all disclaim any knowledge of it. My mom would come home from work and ask, ‘Who did it?’ And we’d all reply, ‘I dunno.’“ Because she laughed, and we didn’t get into trouble, it became a trope. Sineád explained that “I dunno” was a convenient hypothetical scapegoat invented by them to pass blame onto, or to “pass the buck” to use another aphorism. She later added that it was probably related to another saying her mother used to repeat whenever they’d abdicate from their chores, “Let George do it.”

She recalled that laying blame on “I dunno” all began when a neighbor kid came over one day, and stole a doughnut and then left a note saying that ‘Not Me’ took it. So, “Not me” was the genesis of the make-believe character “I dunno.” Because Sineád was the only girl in a family of unruly boys, I think she felt a special need to redirect blame. She said she was later able to manipulate the gender bias in her favor, but not when she was six.

Folk Speech: “That’s for George” 1 folklore

Genre: Folk Speech                                                    
Canice Santos
September, 7, 2001
San Francisco, CA (restaurant)

“George,” “That’s for George”and “George’s” portion, (superstition magic)

(related to“Let George do it” often used as a neck riddle).

My aunt Canice, who lives in Forest Knolls, Ca., said she first learned about “George” from her immigrant Irish parents when she was eight or nine years old when they were living on 131 Third Ave. in San Francisco, ca. 1946. 

Canice is the youngest child of a large family of four girls and four boys. But there was no “George”in the family; he was a fictional character that her father, (Bernard Reilly, born in 1890, Granard, Co. Longford, Ireland) often referred to as “George.” Where he got the character from, we don’t know. He worked for the San Francisco County jail and I speculate that he probably picked up many sayings from cops and inmates. 

According to J.H. Brunvand in “The Study of American Folklore,” (p. 101), this modern proverb, possibly a variation of using a saint’s name,“Let George do it,” may have referred to “the tradition of calling railroad porters by this name.” The man who owned our summer home was a railroad man.

My aunt Canice said the contexts for using the saying, “That’s for George”were varied, though they seemed to revolve around food. With ten people and the possibility of friends unexpectedly joining them at the dinner table, there was often an extra dinner plate set for the unknown guest. If there was an extra portion left over (a rarity), it was promptly claimed as George’s portion (probably invented by the parents to prevent an outbreak of internicene sibling squabbling.).

Canice explained that George’s portion probably was related to Depression lore when food was scarce. The family was able to provide for family and friends. Her daughter Sineád added, “My mom taught me to cook with George in mind,” she always peeled an extra potato for “George.” This reminded them and my other aunts of other food-related sayings: “Leave it for the clean-up man.” 

We have a Thanksgiving custom, we set an extra plate at the table for the unexpected guest—a guest during the holiday was good luck. My aunts explained that the custom of “George” as the mythical extra guest. But I never understood that the extra place was for him, as my grandmother didn’t use the saying. 

Elijah was sometimes mentioned, but more often, it was a mythical McGregor. (Collector’s note: my grandparents’ families survived the Great Irish Potato Famine of 1848, and we have odd quirks associated with food, including sharing and saving food as if there was a great residual fear of running out of food. The end result is that the stored food eventually goes to waste. I think my grandmother (whose grandparents would’ve been survivors), felt residual guilt because her family survived the Famine when so many had died...)

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

Writing the Rails: Train Adventures By the World's Best-Loved Writers

Writing the Rails: Train Adventures By the World's Best-Loved Writers 

 My 1990 travel story Night Train to Moscow: Waging Peace, first published in House On Via Gombito: Writing by North American Women Abroad edited by Madelon Sprengnether, C.W. Truesdale, was picked up by Black Dog & Leventhal (Workman) in 2001. See my blogpost, Bill Truesdale for the backstory.

Writing the Rails: Train Adventures By the World's Best-Loved Writers  edited by Edward C. Goodman. Alas, the book was remaindered soon after it was released, right before 9/11. I never did get to do an author reading or book signing at Barnes & Noble.

Here's a link to my 1991 post. I do not have an electronic facsimile of my story. Only way to get it is to scan pages, but I've no OCR software. I may scan pages direct.  —MH, 2014 Well, it took me six years to get around to it, but the OCR of this text is now at the bottom of this post. It wasn't easy but I managed. I actually had to buy a copy of the book on eBay. Now to see if this text is the same as in House on Via Gombito. It should be as it's a direct reprint. Still missing is the original email that led to the first long draft, and various permutations before the annotated text settled into its present position. —MH 2020.

WRITING THE RAILS
Train Adventures By the World's Best-Loved Writers
Edited by Edward C. Goodman
Black Dog & Leventhal; WORKMAN Publ.

Rich and inviting, this collection of 101 train travel stories, both fact and fiction, by renowned writers from around the world and throughout history, is a feast for the armchair vagabond. The stories, essays, historic accounts, poetry, songs and other pieces that comprise this impressive anthology have been carefully selected from the widest range of sources to reflect the glories of travel by rail, from the Orient Express to the New York City subway. So many of the world's great writers have celebrated train travel, and here they are in one collection-Mary McCarthy on the Italian railways; Paul Theroux on the old Patagonia Express; Lewis Carroll from Through the Looking Glass; F. Scott Fitzgerald from Tender Is the Night; Ian Fleming, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Rudyard Kipling-by turns funny, exciting and moving, and a joy to read throughout. Whether your true love is travel, great literature or trains, you'll get lost in this eclectic and exotic compilation that extends to all parts of the globe and deep into the imaginations of our finest writers.

Transfer Reading, SFSU

The Poetry Center is jammed. Obviously Transfer Magazine is the poetry journal to be in. Last Tuesday's 14 Hills reading, the room was half full. I had two poems accepted: RED POPPIES, and APPROACHING THE ARGUMENT. Both are Dutch poems. For Transfer, I submitted THE ENTROPHY OF EMPTY ROOMS, and THE QUARRY AT REGENWEG. Dan Langton said: "Poems about nostalgia and photographs is a 20th century phoenomenon. It fits the bill." Not sure if that was a compliment—or a backslap. Well, they were written in the 20th c. Get with the 21st century. What will be the new voice of the century, I wonder.

Letter from New Rivers Press 5/10/2001

House On Via Gombito: Writing by North American Women Abroad

Lenin: an Intimate Tombside Chat, after the Fall (monologue)

(It’s 1992, the USSR has fallen, Lenin, still in his tomb in Red Square, is being interviewed by a cadre of western reporters during the interregnum right before Modern Russia is about to be resurrected... We can’t hear the questions the reporters are asking him, only his answers...)

LENIN SPEAKS: Tak! At first I was confused by all the hubub. . . Thank you, yes.
Imagine people lining up day in and day out, in winter, and in summer. . . year in, year out. . .
Finally I can have a good sleep after decades of listening to their frenzied droning.
Lenin, Lenin, Lenin. . . Like lost bees to the hive, how they came and came to their little Papa. . .

October. Das Kapital. The fine print. But of course... eh? We kept our silence.
Nyeh, nyeh, red was never my favorite word, prikrasnaya is: red and beautiful at the same time.
Eh? The thaw came early that year; but Russia taught Napoleon a thing or two about mud!
Two Romes have fallen but all roads lead to Moskva. Ah you should have seπen Moskva then!
Burning? Pasternak’s Matrushka Moskva. Da. He was forbidden, you know.
Official censorship is for the good of the Soviet people.

Yes, it is true Isadora danced for us. Oh how she danced. She loved us. We loved her.
How could you not love such a women as that? Julia? no. But Jack’s wife.... now, she...
You know, your American reporter Jack Reed, he is right here near Spassky Gate.
Here in this wall next to me. Yes. Yes. Is true. In Krasnaya Ploschad. Da!
You say they removed Stalin’s remains from the wall? Och! I am so sorry. I had no idea. . .
He was my poll bearer, you know.
Kiev’s ravine of shame—how many bones in a common grave of the Bibi Yar. . .?
Siberia I knew about, yes. But they were enemies of the state. I do not understand this W.W.II.
How many bodies? 27 million? You say Jews? Siganii?? Also enemies of the state? I had no idea. . .

When they changed my name it was hard to get the ink to flow, but once in the blood. . .
you know how it is. . . like Pasternak’s Zhivago, I always wanted to be a poet among the birches.
Yes, but of course I knew about Zhivago—the book was banned for the masses for they were children.
Pushkin, now he was my favorite. Did you know he was Black? We Russians are colorblind.
Not like you Americans who see color takeover in everything. I spit on your capitalismo!

Tak! They should have just left it Petrsburg. And now it is again Petr’s Grad. Ochin horashao.
Petr, now he modernized Russia. But we confiscated Catherine’s Hermitage for the people. Ludii, ludii
I am not a city, I am institution! You see how they still line up to pay homage to me? To me! ME.
For the record, I was never against the Window to the West. It was your imperialist propaganda.
Just like that story of Leningrad built on a foundation of human bones. . . is ridiculous.

Eh? How I long for a fat plate of varenyekii y smetana, and a glass of pepper vodka. Chut-chut.
Ah yes, I would love to see again those ripe fields of wheat, the blue-eyed cornflowers.
A young pioneer once gave me her most prized possession and I lost it. Indifference, I guess.
Nadezhda, my wife? Her name means hope. Books were our children. We read all that winter in Siberia.
But Socialism was my only bride. And The Great Patriotic War, my mistress. May Day?
Yes, I heard something about that hooligan landing his plane in Red Square. Emergency?
It nearly started W.W. III. Then your Pig Bay. Silos, missiles, silos. We build, you build. . .
red, white; white red and blue. Ya lu blue. Yellowbluebus. Da. That means “I love you” in Russian.

You like my tie? Is modern.. Latest fashion. New image and all. Imagine polka dots. Bah!
We bulldoze so-called modern art. Give me social realism any day. I miss my military uniform.
Did I tell you there is another me waiting in a secret room, in case something goes wrong
when I have my annual bath. He is such a good body double I cannot tell if I am him or he is me.
Yes the embalmers did a good job. But is a state secret. Now Eva Peron, she was a magnificent corpse.
Did you hear, after their coup, one of the generals guarding her body went mad with desire
and he ravaged her right there in the coffin. Imagine! That is why they had to send her to Rome
with false papers to be buried in the ground. No hanky-panky that way. Plot 84, I think.
Yes, I heard when they dug her up she was so perfect, as if asleep. All that golden hair.
They used wax, I think. Me? Formaldehyde and glycerin. and secret ingredients.
The embalmers, they did a good job on me, but they didn’t think of such things.
There is a mummy in China, a marquesa with such magnificent thighs. Oh!
Once I was known as Vlad the Impaler, but now? You have a new wonder drug, viagra?
Perhaps I should give it a try? On the other hand, I don’t want the guards getting any ideas.

Really? The moon? You are joking. A cosmonaut couldn’t possibly live three months in space!
Is impossible. What? They abandoned him? Yes, I know the feeling well. Star Wars?? Shto eta?
Nyeh puni mayu. Your Reagan was always asleep. You had your McCarthy, don’t forget Jesse Jackson.
Tak. . . Whatever happened to my comrades Karl and Feliks? They pulled the statues down?
Sometimes I can’t help but think of poor Trotsky in Mexico with that artist Frida—
His blood blossomed, a red star on limewashed walls as white as snow. Prikrasnaya.
You say the assassin used an axe; was he a good Ukrainian kossak? Da?
Did I tell you about my mausoleum; the red granite is from Cherkassy Oblast.

Nyeh, I don’t know Yeltsyn’s stance; his name? like a pine tree. Schto? Well, we’ll see.
The other vorona’s name meant strong as steel but he was a mean sparrow. Informer.
His wife Anna committed suicide you know. Terrible business. Tak! Keep silence.
Who puts the red rose on her tomb winter and summer? I ask you or where? Carnations are Soviet.
Whatever happened to my little blackbird, Gorbachev? and his Raisa? How she loved Paris!
The things I hear when my crypt is empty, when my comrades have gone home to their tea.
The guards, you know, they talk of politics, aout their bosses, wives, the vodka and bread lines;
always the shortages. Is it really true, the shortages? Not when I was alive.

God, I’d love to get my hands on a copy of Pravda. It means truth. Not like your yellow journalism.
You know, journalism was my first love. Oh! for the smell of ink, the clatter of presses,
it excited me, the truth in black and white for all the world to see. . .
I always thought we’d free the masses. Nyet! The revolution did not fail!
That’s where Stalin went wrong. Not everyone has the vision. . . or the means. Gulags.
“With an iron hand we shall lead humankind to happiness,” indeed!

Winter is best; for the ground is hard as steel. Political thaws are treacherous.
We have twenty words for snow and winter. Siberia, how I love the word, like wind in the pines.
Yosef should have known better than to rule forever like a Tsar.
Did we not get rid of Nikolai and his family for the good of the people.
But of course they loved Stalin, it was a cult. He was a vain man, a cruel father. I lost my brother there.
I would have given my eye teeth to see Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the table.
Yes, well, Breszhnev dozed off here and there too; ochin starray like your Hollywood Reagan.

But Anastasia did not escape. It was a bloody business, but we kept silence.
They say the bullets bounced off diamonds hidden in her corsets.
We buried them deep in the forest, quicklimed their bones. . . we kept silence.
But our sources know you have Romanovs living in your California, your Fort Ross,
they took treasures of the state which belong to the people of Russia. They should return the tea set too.
It is funny, in California, you have our Sevastopol, our Fort Ross, our Russian River—
Slavianka (Young maiden) we called it when we owned California. Love!
Our Rezanov and your Spanish Conchita Argüello, now that was a love story.
Too bad she became a nun after he was killed in Siberia. I never did like religion.

St. Basil’s? It is beautiful, is it not? Yes, it is true Ivan the Terrible had his eyes put out . . . Tak.
But this country’s is always full of silly rumors. Why do you think I ruled with such a firm hand?
It is the archi-texture: spare the birch rod, spoil the children.
I would love to see Petr’burg again in the Fall. I miss the parades, the banners lufting—
Oh! all that red against the snow! Like Mars Field. Is beautiful. Exciting.
No, I can’t see so well, but I can still hear. It’s so very quiet now in the Kreml.
These four walls, they have become my own personal Lyubianka. . .
Da. Nyeh, nyeh. That’s not true. I had considered stepping down; but they wouldn’t let me. . .
In the end I too, was a prisoner, nothing more than an opiate for the masses.

In Russia, we have a saying: Without a storm there can be no romance. I have had romance,
the greatest romance of all. Bolshoya spaceba for our little chat, I have so few visitors these days.
But the spruces outside my tomb, they are learning to speak, truly, the ground, it is thawing
and I hear their branches whispering such great secrets to the wind. Shhh! Keep silence!


NOTE BENE: Prikrasnaya/ beautiful, (krasnaya/ red); Bibi Yar/ the ravine where Stalin secretly slaughtered Jews; varenyekii y smetana/ dumplings & sour cream; Nyeh puni mayu/ I don’t understand; tak/ so, well; Siganii gypsies; Oblast/ region; vorona/ a crow (=black sheep); sparrows were Stalin’s special informers, Gorbachev/ blackbird, he was Lenin’s student; Pravda/ truth; ochin starray/ very old; Lyubianka/ KGB interrogation prison in Moscow; bolshoya spaceba/ thank you.

©2001 Maureen Hurley for Hystin Chinn; class

Journal entry, 2/26/2001 UC Berkeley, Dmitri Prigov

2/26/2001 UC Berkeley, Dmitri Prigov talks of a conceptualist underground, or living the largest possible life.

Dmitri Prigov’s English has improved vastly since I last saw him, so has his ego. In fact, it’s grown in leaps and bounds. It knows no limit. He is enamored of his own poetry, after art, postmodernism, he speaks of the little culinary desires, politics, the domestication of spiritualism. He spews out so many ideas, he sounds like a thesaurus of poetic concepts. He talks of the White Square group but says little about its performative poetics. We know little more than before. Which is nothing.

He said he once sculpted large sculptures for kids on playgrounds. It paid well. Then refers back to his first novel, Live in Moscow. He invokes Pushkin, he sings arias. He brags how he’s written 24,000 poems for the new millennium on the Internet, he says that’s a poem a month for 4000 years. A 4000-year project, comparable to building the Egyptian pyramids. However, his five-year plan is to write two poems a day which he says has accomplished. Nothing like post-Soviet sound bytes. The language remains the same. I hope he’s not going to exercise them all today.

He has a publisher. He substituted a plan of his own, and wrote 4000 more plans. It’s called the people, as planned. And he was able to extend the deadline. We all have elements to publish, poet and reader, but to read all 24,000 poems. At once? One lacuna near the critic. There will be an appeal for the critic as artifact. What are the future audiences? If they’ll even exist? Will it survive to the year 4000?

All this strategy packaging is akin to an armored tactical piece, is called images. Unknown behavior within a situation. I’m thinking he’s either trying too hard to impress us, or he’s off his lithium. My mother goes off like that. It’s a real whirlwind, holding onto a through-line. Any through-line.

He says, I have written images in the poets’ voices. Hyper Soviet poems, the critic poet. A woman poet, Soviet, gay, Chinese, patriotic, liberal, democratic poet…

There is not enough time today to read them all, he says, so I’ll begin with the oral text. Any tone with a number of meetings, call them arias. An aria is to shout/scream/plow. A poem is not severed from ritual. And now it is a rock. My task is to produce poetry that doesn’t coincide with a rock. Here is an alphabet text, phonetic images. The Russian alphabet from a Latin translation. I’ve written 150 books. I try to follow the rules of genre, rhyming lines, then letters becoming positions, funereal. With each letter lists of books Greek if only I remained alive. He talks of Anna Akhmatova, and says women women women. Clearly he does not understand them.

We still haven’t a clue as to what he is talking about. And then he says, now for some regular rhymed poetry. Hyper Sovietski. Ultimately everything is main hero, he is a policeman, he is militia. The rest sounds like Latinate gibberish fired at random. I have to unpack his English. I don’t gather much from his ramblings and frankly wonder why he’s considered such a great poet. Maybe in Russian.

He talks of Soviet text, the literature, the genre, the idea of conceptualism. The unconventional appeal. He summons obituaries, weather forecasts, he’s like a newspaper on crack. He speaks of the death of Pushkin by cultural committee, Dostoyevsky, and another hour on an alphabet poem. I recognize words from the Russian and he goes back and forth, back and forth between languages. I’m probably one of the few that does understand. Gospodi, he says again. God help us, indeed, I think. Then he talks about the smart culinary life. What? Celestial speaking in winter, Red Square, prikrasnaya, take an old story, speak of it to me. To life, to know, to love. Winter, toilet paper, today’s utopian market, the conversational exchange rate, the dollar situation, how the dollar changes from day to day.

He says, I try to realize the possibilities of exchanges, but he returns to gibberish in multiple languages. I’m sure it has a meaning for him. I perk up for the Jubilee birth anniversary of Pushkin. Dmitri said that he performed with musicians and every country, he absorbs the mantra of high culture. Mantra, not the semantic level coming together, body with rhythm. The Russian mantra is the first line of Eugene Onengin. He recites the first paragraph like a Buddhist mantra. People don’t even know whose uncle died, but they know of Uncle Vanya within the culture. Everyone knows Orpheus and Eurydice. He substitutes adjectives for verbs. And strange unearthly leviathan behavior emerges victorious.

On translation. He says he divided a text into five parts and gave it to five scholars to restore by memory. He says the first chapter returned similar, but each chapter was completely different. He also gave the text to Western scholars and it was even more lamentable. And then I thought of the invisible lunatic translation syndrome. Out of sight, out of mind, translated into Russian and back to English again becomes invisible lunatics. In this case, everything was lost in translation. We are witnessing it in action.

A woman’s upset with the role of women in the poems but he says it’s part of the culture, it’s a male world, his rhythm is an amalgam of the classical culture, and the material culture—a syndrome of the dramatic. At the end, we don’t clap in unison, being from the west, we clap individually— it rises and falls unevenly in organic crescendos. He completely misses the boat. In Russia where everyone claps in unison. Together. The ludí. The people. We clap apart. I don’t bother to meet him afterwards.

• Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost

Celtic Literature Laurie Fadave

SPRING 2001: WCL Celtic Literature 421 (3 units)

Laurie Fadave, Lecturer              (SFSU, grade A)

TEXTS:

Mabinogi & Other Tales, Patrick Ford

The Tain, tr. Thomas Kinsella

Celtic Literature Anthology, Peter Beresford

Sweeney Astray, Ed. Seamus Heaney

Celtic Heroic Age, Ed. Koch and Carey

Plus a reader: Finn McCool cycle/Boyhood Deeds, Ulster Cycle, 2nd Battle of Magh Tuireadh, Celtic Languages, Celtic gods/goddesses, Lugh, The Dagda, Diarmuid (L.Gregory), Amergin, Macha, Ogham, Gododdin, Triads, Anroddiad, Heaney, modern Celtic composers, etc.

SPRING 1974: ANTH 410, Peoples and Cultures of Europe,( SFSU, 3 units, grade B) Prof. McGrath

Primary focus on Celtic, and Proto-Celtic tribes and Mediterranean cultures.

Ancient Irish Tales, Cross & Slover, The Tain, tr. Thomas Kinsella, etc.

Readings in Old and Middle Irish. 700-1200; Holland

Readings in Old and Middle Irish. 700-1200; 
Prof. Gary Holland, Linguistics,
SPRING 2001: Celtic Studies 105B (4 units), 
 (Full participation/grade/audit)
I'm afraid I dismally flunked the final in this class. But I'm glad I persevered.

Designed to offer students who have already taken the basic grammar course in Old and Middle Irish (105A) further opportunity to work with important texts written in the period A.D. 700-1200 and to refine their knowledge of the language as well as their grasp of the vernacular tradition as a whole. Texts will include both prose and poetry, and major genres such as epic, legend, and genealogy.

Prerequisites: Successful completion of Celtic Studies 105A or equivalent. Consent of instructor.

TEXTS:

Wolfgang Meid (ed.), Táin Bó Froech

Rudolph Thurneysend (ed.), Scéla Muicce Mac Dathó

Xeroxed poems 


I was in way over my head in both of Gary's classes, the other students were real linguists, so this was easy for them. Me? I was the auditing poet. One guy, can't remember his name, was simultaneously taking other Indo-European language classes—Hittite!  I loved the class. I didn/don't know the basics of forensic grammar (you can still write well and not know the basic functions or the forensics of language). So that was a huge handicap. I learned some useful things but I'm still shaky, grammatically speaking. But hey, I know what VSOP stands for.

 This class was enough to drive me to drink, but then, who had the time? I got up at 6 AM, translated a paragraph, and again in the evening, until midnight. There wasn't much room for anything else in my life, no time to write poetry, let alone, dreamtime. Dan Melia called Old Irish Bloodbath 101 A at Harvard. There sure was a lot of slaughter going on. But the chill delight when I translated aloud, in class, Cuchullan's epic line: The enemy of your enemy is my friend, it haunts me to this day. Magic and absolute wonder. What a distilled learning moment. I was so owl-eyed that I think even Gary got a kick out of it. Thank you Gary for that moment in time.

Had Dan been teaching the Old Irish class, I probably would've fared significantly better. His teaching style, is more suited to my learning style, such as it is. But I worked hard, and was diligent, with my nose to the books... it gave me a new insight into reading the Irish epics, having transcribed them, word for word from the Old Irish. The learning and knowledge is in my head, somewhere, and sometimes I can actually retrieve bits of it from my imperfect knowledge database. Who knew I would learn to like parsing lines? I felt I was doing real work. Delving deep into something almost unnameable and profound, unlocking those words from the past, like that. And earning the story, word by word.

I eventually plan to transcribe my Celtic Studies class notes, so this post is a placeholder (as well as a reading list). A reminder, a smack in the gob. What brought this on: I was asked to do a lecture on Celtic Bardic Poetry at Sacramento Poetry Center, and a) I was far too long gone from this material, b) I couldn't put my hands on the notes,. But I at least still had some of the books, and TG for the internet. So many medieval texts are now online (not so in 1999). I was able to reconstruct what I needed. But it was almost as bad as reinventing the wheel.   —MH 11/2015   

Celtic Stereotypes

Prof. Dan Melia ModCeltic Culture fl Scotland S/01-2

STEREOTYPES: IRISH

alcoholics/ friendly/ gregrious

always up for a laugh/ party

whiskey/guinness/whiskey

shamrockery/ stage irish

loads of movie stereotypes

St Paddywagon’s Day parade

crock of gold/rainbow

green isle/lots of rain/ farms

(superstitious islandfolk)

saints, scholars & schizophrenics

no snakes; magic

Standing stones

impractical to an extreme

wanting a good time

hot-tempered

stubborn/ pig-headed

hospitable, friendly

potatoes/ famine

sodabread/tea/ bacon

turf fire, poor cooks

tin-penny whistle

uliean pipes, bodhran

singers, storytellers

stepdancers/ tapdancers

religious/superstitious&

sentimental to an extreme

the little people/tuatha de

pooka/puck, fairies

The Troubles/divided/war

North vs South/ poverty

Catholic vs Protestant

1916 Uprising/ Freestate

betrayal from within/ pettymindedness to an extreme

Michael Collins, DeValera

emmigration, poverty

largest body of medieval lit.

Ulster, Finn, Tuatha cycles

Cuchulainn, Finn mac Cumhail

Tristan & Isolde/ill-fated love

Gaelic: a dying language

SCOTS

dour/melancholic/pettyminded

thrifty/stingy/reserved/friendly/ peevish/ smart/ practical/ inventive/ philosophers/scientists

Presbyterians /evangelical

vs Catholic minority

(not) given to drink

whisky galore

rich alcoholics who can hide it

highlanders a breed apart

bagpipes/kilts, scian dubh

(nothing is worn/ it’s in fine working order)

haggis & thistles/cockaleekie

crofters/ islanders/ isolated

(superstitious islandfolk)

loch ness monster/wee beasties

sheep buggerers

standing stones/ magic

Stone of Scone, Dalriada

shortbreads/scones

poor cooks

hospitable, friendly

Colum Cille/Iona royalty/saints

BooodyMary got her head cut off

Catholic vs Protestant

James II/VII; alliance w/England

Kenneth mac Alpin,Macbeth

Robert the Bruce, Braveheart

traitors: Bannockburn, Glencoe, Culloden Mhor

Highland clearances

Balmoral (kissing up to English royalty)

cultural thieves (Ossian)

emmigration poverty/wealth

Gaelic on the comeback

Lowland Scots (Robert Burns)

sentimental to an extreme

CORNISH

pasties

Poldark!

Pirates of Penzance

French Creek/smugglers

island causeway (name?)

tucked away villages

King Arthur/Tintagel

Geoffrey of Monmouth

Tristan & Isolde/ill-fated love

A dead/resurrected language

WELSH

eisteffodd (sp) chair

singers, poets

Daffyd ap Gwyllm

Dylan Thomas

alcoholics(reserved unless drunk)

suspicious, less friendly

Methodists/ evangelical

bible thumpers, dour, never smile

coal mines/ extreme poverty

How Green Was My Valley

very mountianous (inbred)

emmigration

dragons/ magic

Tudors/ betrayal

Mabinogion

Battle of the Trees

Trisan & Isolde/ill-fated love

poor cooks

Welsh language in recovery

Patagonia, Pennsylvania

BRETONS

Gauguin’s women/lace hats

Mt San Michel/island causeway

Lawyer/bread story; Ys, rocks

Carnac/standing stones

magical coastline

Breton Lays, Song of Roland

Tristan & Isolde/ill-fated love

Marie loses realm to Phillip(end of Brittany)

No Bretons or spitting allowed

good cooks, lots of cream fat

very pious/catholic to an extreme

MANX

tailess cats

1st Viking parliament, coins

tax haven for rock stars

last druidic stronghold

a very dead language

SPAIN/FRANCE/BELGIUM

Walloons/ marginalized

Wild Geese (Macmahonaise/hennessey)

Flight of the Earls

gallegos/singers, dancers

flamenco/ nearly absorbed

no Celtic language at all

King of Spain’s daughter (wine)

GALICIA

(Missing....I looked under the Word shell via RTF, and found completely unrelated text about Hannibal, LOL. I think I do have a hard copy of this somewhere...but where? No idea on date, other than 2001 0r 2002 —MH 11/2015)