Dr. James T. Callow publications
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The James T. Callow Folklore Archive
Your search for P740 returned 781 results.
When you're washing you clothes don't get wet or your husband
will become a drunk.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; RIVER ROUGE
| Subject headings: | Favorites BELIEF -- Home BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1955
Superstition
It is a old Polish belief that you should not have a cat around
a sleeping baby. It is believed that the cat will lie on the
baby's face, especially the mouth and nose, and the baby will
suffocate.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; HAMTRAMCK
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Mammal BELIEF -- Birth BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 03-00-1992
When I was in gradeschool I always heard that if you step on a
crack, in the sidewalk, you'll break your mother's back.
Where learned: MISSISSIPPI ; Louise
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Street Trip Relations between relatives, friends, host and guest Social class Rank BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1970
When I would eat oranges as a child, I would be afraid to
swallow the seeds because I had always been told that if I did an
orange tree would grow inside me and kill me.
Where learned: MISSISSIPPI ; Louise
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Plant BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1970
In grade school while eating lunch in the cafeteria, I would
see children drop food on the floor. But to be sure the food
wouldn't harm them when they picked it up to eat it, they would say
a little prayer;
God made dirt so it won't hurt
Put it in your mouth and it won't work.
Where learned: MISSISSIPPI ; Louise
| Subject headings: | Ballad Song Dance Game Music Verse -- Belief CUSTOM FESTIVAL -- School BELIEF -- Prayer BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1970
When a child walks around the house, with one shoe on and one
shoe off, it's sending their mother to an early grave.
Where learned: LOUISIANA ; New Orleans
Date learned: 00-00-1970
If you remove a mole or wart from your body, you will bleed
to death.
Where learned: LOUISIANA ; New Orleans
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Body part Senses BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1970
You should never cut your hair; that's where your strength
is.
Where learned: LOUISIANA ; New Orleans
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Body part Senses Hair, on head, mustache, widow's peak BELIEF -- Product or activity of man or animal BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1970
If you make a strange face and someone hits you on the back,
your face will stay in that position forever.
Submitter comment: This saying is popular among grade school age children.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; GROSSE POINTE FARMS
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Body part Senses BELIEF -- Body part Senses Head, physiognomy, face BELIEF -- Measure of time BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1985
If you yawn and don't cover your mouth, the devil will steal
your breath away.
Submitter comment: This is a saying popular among young children.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; GROSSE POINTE
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Devil Demon BELIEF -- Body part Senses BELIEF -- Product or activity of man or animal BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness SPEECH -- Gesture |
Date learned: 00-00-1990
If you are in a falling elevator, you will not be injured if
you jump up in the air at the same time that the elevator hits the
bottom of the shaft.
| Subject headings: | Favorites BELIEF -- Product or activity of man or animal BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1960
This is a saying I learned from my mother when I was younger:
"If you keep making that expression your face will freeze like
that." What she meant by this was that if I continually made a
certain expression my face would someday freeze with that
expression on it. She said this to me through my childhood and
still says it to me today. I think it was her way to keep me
from making faces. Unfortunately, it has not worked!
James Callow comment: Cf. Hand, North Carolina no. 172.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; DEARBORN HEIGHTS
James Callow Keyword(s): FUNCTION
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Body part Senses Head, physiognomy, face BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness SPEECH -- Formula SPEECH -- Gesture |
Date learned: 00-00-1982
When I was younger my mother always used to tell me to never
go outside with a wet head in the winter because my head would
freeze and I would catch a cold.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; DEARBORN HEIGHTS
James Callow Keyword(s): TEMPERATURE
Date learned: 00-00-1977
When I was in my first year of Dental Hygiene school I
learned of a dental superstition from one of my instructors. It
states that for every pregnancy a woman goes through she will
lose one tooth. Neither I nor my instructor are sure how or
where this belief came about, but we do know that it was
considered an "old wive's tale."
James Callow comment:
See Hand, North Carolina, no. 13: "Each child costs a woman a
tooth." Hand cites parallels among Pennsylvania Germans and
Southern Blacks, as well as the residents of Illinois and the
Ozarks.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; DETROIT
| Subject headings: | Favorites BELIEF -- Birth BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1987
When I was in high school and started drinking coffee my
mother was against it. She told me that drinking coffee would
stunt my growth and that it was not for children. Since then, I
always hear people say exactly what my mother told me about
coffee and wonder whether it is true or if it is just a way of
getting kids to not drink coffee.
James Callow comment: See Puckett, Ohio, nos. 1667, 5524.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; DEARBORN HEIGHTS
James Callow Keyword(s): FUNCTION
| Subject headings: | Food Drink -- Non-alcoholic fruit beverage Coffee BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1984
The Legend of the Shoe Tree
This is the Legend of the Shoe Tree: If you drive down a
certain back road (road name not known) in Northville, Michigan
you will come across a tree with hundreds of shoes thrown up into
it. Legend has it that a murderer used to kill his victims and
leave his mark by throwing each victim's shoes into the tree. It
is also believed that anyone who touches the tree or anything in
it will be cursed and then die.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; LIVONIA
James Callow Keyword(s): Touching tabu
| Subject headings: | Favorites BELIEF -- Outlaw Criminal Bandit Pirate BELIEF -- Plant BELIEF -- Product or activity of man or animal BELIEF -- Curse BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1990
When I was younger I always used to hear people say that you
should not swallow your chewing gum because it takes seven years
to digest and that if you do swallow it too often all of the
pieces of chewed gum accumulate into a big pile and sit there in
your stomach until it is digested.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; ALLEN PARK
| Subject headings: | 686 Seven / Sevenths / Several Food Drink -- Special Form and PurposeObject of Bodily Consumption BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1980
When I was young I was told by my parents that if I ate
anything with seeds such as a watermelon and swallowed one of the
seeds a plant of the same thing I ate would begin to grow in my
stomach.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; DETROIT
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Plant BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1965
I heard from someone at the hospital that I work at that the
reason many men have receding hairlines is that they wear
baseball caps quite often and that the constant pulling off of
these caps over the years can cause the man to pull out his hair
in a way that it will not ever grow back in the forehead area.
Where learned: MICHIGAN ; DETROIT
| Subject headings: | BELIEF -- Body part Senses No hair, baldness BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1987
At the beginning of the teething process place an egg with
the child's name written on it in a sock or stocking. Place the
egg above the door of the child's room and this will cause the
child not to be fretful during teething.
James Callow comment:
Puckett, Ohio, no. 1400: "To prevent pain and diarrhea with
teething, take a fresh laid egg, write the child's name on it.
Then hide the egg till the teething is over (Mrs. S, F, 60,
h.wife, Negro, Cleveland, 1961); ... put the egg up over a door
(H.D., F, 26, R.N., Negro, Cleveland, 1958)."
For various uses of eggs in teething rituals, see Puckett,
Ohio, nos. 1398-1402.
Cf. Cannon, Utah, no. 716: "The teething egg: When children
are teething, put an egg in a jar. Seal it up and put it in a
closet somewhere. There are gases in the egg that leak out into
the air of the house. They
Where learned: DETROIT
| Subject headings: | Person / Nickname Favorites BELIEF -- Product or activity of man or animal BELIEF -- Means of Causing or Avoiding Illness |
Date learned: 00-00-1989