Vive l'avenir

I found this entry in Choice Notes from “Notes and Queries”: Folk Lore and I need to be sassy about it:

“A stork settling on a house is a harbinger of happiness. To kill such a bird would be sacrilege.”

Pretty sure this is German rather than Dutch, I’ve heard they were associated with protection against house fires, because they like to build nests on top of a chimney

“A person born with a caul is considered fortunate.”

Yes, it was also thought to give them special powers like clairvoyance

“An overturned salt-cellar is a ship wrecked. If a person take salt and spill it on the table, it betokens a strife between him and the person next to whom it fell. To avert the omen, he must lift up the shed grains with a knife, and throw them behind his back.”

Yes, it either brings bad luck or causes disagreements. I’ve never heard about the shipwrecking though and the knife is not necessary for throwing

“After eating eggs in Holland, you must break the shells, or the witches would sail over in them to England. The English don’t know under what obligations they are to the Dutch for this custom. Please to tell them.”

I have heard folklore anecdotes about witches using eggshells as boats, but I’ve never heard of them specifically sailing to England. Considering how often we were at odds with England I also doubt we would stop them

“If you make a present of a knife or scissors, the person receiving must pay something for it; otherwise the friendship between you would be cut off.”

Yes! Some people actually still include a penny in the package when they gift a knife, so you can immediately pay for it

“A tingling ear denotes there is somebody speaking of you behind your back. If you hear the noise in the right one, he praises you; if on the left side he is calling you a scoundrel or something like that. But, never mind! For if, in the latter case, you bite your little finger, the evil speaker’s tongue will be in the same predicament. By all means don’t spare your little finger!”

I have heard of this one, but never the biting your finger part

“If, at a dinner, a person yet unmarried be placed inadvertently between a married couple, be sure he or she will get a partner within the year. It’s a pity it must be inadvertently.”

Never heard of it. But I appreciate the implication that we’re sloppy with our table settings. We are

“A potato begged or stolen is a preservative against rheumatism. Chestnuts have the same efficacy.”

Those are both old folk remedies, but it doesn’t always say begged or stolen

“If you feel on a sudden a shivering sensation in your back, there is somebody walking over your future grave.”

Yes. Or alternatively a dog, or a frog is jumping over your grave

“Don’t go under a ladder, for if you do you will be hanged.”

Hanged?? It brings bad luck, yes, but it’s not that deadly

Sitting amid the bric-a-brac of generations of seafarers before him, fisherman and museum curator John Bhaba Jeaic Ó Confhaola of Galway, Ireland, tried to describe a word to interviewer Manchán Magan. The word, in the Irish language, was for a three-bladed knife on a long pole, used by generations of Galway fishermen to harvest kelp. Ó Confhaola dredged it from his memory: a scian coirlí. “I don’t think I’ve said that word out loud for 50 years,” he told Magan. It was a sentiment that Magan would hear again and again along Ireland’s west coast. This is a place shaped by proximity to the ocean: nothing stands between the sea and the country’s craggy, cliff-lined shores for roughly 3,000 kilometers, leaving it open to the raw breath of the North Atlantic. […] Early last year [2020], Magan […] began collecting coastal words from towns along the west coast, in an effort to preserve them. […] The recordings make up the Foclóir Farraige, or Sea Dictionary: an online database of recordings and definitions sorted by their regional origin. Magan also recently published a selection of words in an illustrated book. […]

Yet the words are often much more than utilitarian. They carry a sense of poetry, and a perspective on nature. There is the town of Donegal’s mada doininne, a particular type of dark cloud lining the horizon that foretells bad weather. The word, literally translated, means “hounds of the storm.”

Or bláth bán ar gharraí an iascaire, a description of choppy sea from the county of Galway that means “white flowers on the fisherman’s garden.” […]

A coastal Irish speaker, walking the beach at night, might have equally expected to hear stranach (the murmuring of water rushing from shore), or the whisper of caibleadh (distant spirit voices drifting in over the waves).

They knew the ceist an taibhse (the question for the ghost) – a riddle used to determine if someone they met along the way was human or supernatural.

Many words describe ways of predicting the weather, or fishing fortunes, by paying attention to birds or wind direction; to the sea’s sounds; or to the colors in a fire. […]

Ó Baoill and Magan both point out that preserving Ireland’s traditional coastal vocabulary is especially important in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss. Take a word like borráite, from Carraroe village, which describes a rocky offshore reef found in the area. Kelp once grew on these reefs in abundance, tangling with other seaweed species and providing refuge for fish. Due to climate change and overfishing, however, Magan says that a borráite today would host neither kelp nor many fish.

“Contained within that word is the entire ecosystem that was in that area,” Magan says. Words like this, he hopes, can both remind us of what we have lost and reconnect us to what we might still preserve.

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In a city, like the pic above, they represent rebellion, and efficiency. The messiness of humanity. We like to imagine we're oh so logical and neat so we design our cities to be logical and neat an then real humans literally trample on that idea. The ego required to think you can design something perfect that checks every box. Life is all about compromise and patching stuff when some new problem arises. Though people have certainly tried! Ohio state univeristy let students carve their desire paths, and then paved them over. It looks pretty artsy.

Some people will try to discourage desire paths, but this is almost always going to fail.

Eventually, people just have to accept them. Humans are too dang stubborn.

Certain desire paths are just adorable. A 0.5 second time saver. You just can't design for maximum efficiency, humans will always find shortcuts!

Though on occasion a desire path can actually be the least efficient way...especially if you're superstitious.

In a wilder area, such as below, they show us the curiosity of humans. A desire path somewhere natural often tells you there's something interesting just ahead. (Though remember some ecosystems are fragile and will suffer if trampled! Stick to paths in these sorts of areas)

And how about desire stairs? I always think these look so cool. We get see humans determination to climb, to traverse every kind of terrain.

And for something really crazy...a desire path used for centuries will create a 'holloway'

About two years ago a kind anon asked me for folklore around transness and I only had one fairy tale to share. Since then I’ve done a lot of reading, and now I’ve gathered some proper gender nonconforming fairy tales to share with you all.

I specifically chose stories with happy endings and positive characters, but please keep in mind these are all translated products of their time. Usually I don’t shy away from retelling stories a bit, but in this case I think it’s worth leaving them untouched for history’s sake.

I’ll try putting some modern-day labels on these stories to make them easier to choose from:

The Unicorn, Spanish, collected in 1947. AFAB, bisexual protagonist who physically transitions to male through magic while he is already married to a fully supportive wife. [Cw: murder, attempt at being outed.]

The Counterfeit Marquise, French, literary fairy tale written in 1697 by Charles Perrault. AMAB protagonist (noble) is raised and identifies as a woman, she falls in love with a handsome nobleman who turns out to be in the same situation but AFAB, they marry happily and have a child. [Cw: gender disphoria]

Florinda, Chilean, collected in 1962. AFAB protagonist who physically transitions to male through divine intervention while he is already married to a fully supportive wife. [Cw: attempt at incest, attempt at being outed.]

The Abbot of Druimenaig, Irish, collected or written 1484-87. A young abbot finds himself transformed into a woman, lives as a wife and mother for seven years, is then transformed back and goes back to his wife, but divides parental responsibility with his husband. [Cw: initial unhappiness at both transformations, mixed-feelings ending.]

Ileana Simziana, Romanian, collected 1870s. AFAB protagonist (royal) who physically transitions to male while completing impossible tasks because of a “curse” that suits him very well. [Cw: attempt at being outed]

The Girl Who Was a Boy, based on the previous tale, but “gently adapted into the 21st century” by Paul B. Sturtevant. (In other words: minus some “product of its time” issues.)

The Princess and the Dív who exchanged sexes, Persian, collected in the 12th century. AFAB protagonist (royal) who was raised as a man strikes a deal with a spirit to briefly exchange sexes so that he can marry his betrothed, the exchange is made permanent because they are both happier for it. [Cw: threat of parental abuse.]