A Word Edgewise |
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A Word Edgewise |
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Last Updated 01/20/06
For more literature go
to Clendenin Books
Email: mjclen@our-town.com
DON'T
TELL ME IT WILL RAIN ON MY PICNIC
I wonder if young girls, when they reach the age where they consider boys
to be human beings and a part of their future, still look for the signs, the fun
to find superstitions that we used to find.
Even now, every time we see a black bird my sister still says, “One
crow sorrow--- maybe there’s another one---two crows joy.” It goes on: three
crows a letter/ four crows boy./ Five crows silver/ six crows gold/ seven crows
secret/ that’s never been told. That’s all I remember; more crows than that
would probably be a crow air force invading the pecan orchard. The number we
really hoped for was four crows.
Most predicting signs required the appropriate reaction, such as throwing
salt over your shoulder to ward off bad luck. Finding a four-leaf clover.
One superstition was about the need of telling the bees, at the death of
some family member, else the bees would leave. Someone had to go out to the
hives and tell them of the death by placing a black ribbon among them.
Did you ever hear this one? After you stub your toe, kiss your thumb and
face the opposite direction and you’ll see your sweetheart. Lots of toe
stubbing took place.
Think of your sweetheart when you have the hiccups. If they stop
immediately, he loves you; if they continue, he doesn’t love you.
A girl will be an old maid if she is struck by a broom while someone is
sweeping.
If a woman’s first toe is shorter than her second toe, she will be the
ruler in her future household.
It’s all about seeing into the future, having a little control over
life happenings. Not that it really worked any more than foretelling works now
with all the technologies available. We still step blindly from one day to the
next. We may plan down to the last detail, and become very uncomfortable when
something unforeseen shakes the plans, yet we have no control, nor foreknowledge
to depend upon.
You may ask about weather forecasting, and science just may increase the
accuracy somewhat—or tell one when to open the fear faucet because of
impending storms. Tornadoes, floods, Nature’s moods still catch most of us
unprepared. Maybe predicting weather change is better now with technology than
by an ache in a knee, or by how many fuzzy worms drop off the tree. Still, the
old saying, “Whoever predicts Texas weather is either a new-comer or a
fool,” has merit.
This hunger to know the future, to be a little in control, makes fortune
tellers popular. I read an interesting account about an old woman before the
Civil War who was often consulted by the community. “Nobody didn’t know how
old she was, because she was already living when everybody in the Valley was
borned and she couldn’t tell nobody her age because she didn’t know it her
own self.”
Mammy Wise, she was called. “Folks come from clear over in the next
county to git Mammy Wise to sooth up something that was troubling them. And she
always spelled up the truth.” She even predicted the Civil War because she saw
a star from the north sky travel “clean acrost the heavens and run smack dab
into a star in the south end of the sky.”
The way people talk changes from area to area and from age to age. To me,
the fascination of this story about Mammy Wise is the way it is written in
HEARTS OF FIRE, by Kemp Battle. Telling about Mammy going into a trance to
foretell the future: “Well, old Mammy’s eyes begun to git set in her head
like as if she was dead and ripe to bury. Then her hands begun to shake and
pretty soon, when she quit shaking and was almost as stiff as a corpse, she
begun to mutter something nobody but a soothsayer knowed what it was.”
Mammy learned that spelling out futures didn’t always bring peace and
happiness. She always meant good when she spelled out things. I wonder how many
fortune tellers are that careful.