Folklore 3.18.13

FOLK BELIEFS AND PRACTICES BY H. HALPERT & P. BREWSTER;

SUMMARY
 The article is a collection of sayings found in Southern Indiana. They focus on topics such as weather, planting, good/bad luck, fighting, superstitious signs, death, love, money, work, borderline wiccan practices for wishes/divinations, cause and effect, and miscellaneous superstitions.

THOUGHTS

I've heard a few of these, like the first few weeks of the beginning of the year predicts how the weather will go for the rest of the year. For the most part though, I've never heard a lot of these.  I found some to be funny - a large crop of cumbers will be grown if  a man straddles the hill when the seeds are planted - made me think of inappropriate penis jokes. Some were weird, like the one about lighting 3 cigarettes with 1 match, and some had gave me a WTF moment (knocking heads together = sleeping together? urine will help dye hold better?) but they all were quiet interesting. A few of the practices/saying were borderline wiccan which I found to be really interesting since S. Indy is very close to the bible belt.

Q&A
 This was documented in December, 1943. It's a wonder I don't recognize any of these. Does anyone else in that area for that matter?

They all had common themes, are these themes found to be common in other areas?

If a modern collection was drawn, what would some of those sayings say?
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TRADITIONS OF DISBELIEF AND BELIEF BY D. HUFFORD;

SUMMARY
This article was very hard to read. The font is faded out pretty badly in some spots - page 49 is a great example. Because of this, I only got bits and pieces of the actual article. Basically the author first breaks down and categories elements of the belief, which are supernatural in nature. From there he continually breaks down the elements and common themes found in these beliefs. He speculates that these beliefs give rise to traditions, such as throwing salt over your shoulder. He mentions something about hallucinations and them being cross-culturally consistent and then the font looses me. By the time I can read it again, we're talking about how early ghost reports are and how there are still many (~200) that are still unexplained today, which is being quoted from some other author's work that he proceeds to tear apart because the previous author didn't take into account how mundane events could be used to explain the unexplainable. The author closes on how they believe the folklore study should be shifted from religious in nature to scientific instead of arguing between the two.

THOUGHTS
Oh god another old article and I can't even read this one. I'm pretty superstitious myself, and I believe in the supernatural. That being said, this article was a pretty big let down. Where's the ghost stories? The modern nod to EMT scanners and infrared cameras? The mention of TV shows the hunt ghosts and inspected the supposedly haunted? There isn't any because all of that didn't exist in 1982. Pity.

Q&A

Could we not have done better? Not to be insulting, but really? 1982 ghost hunting?

The author states that there is no real cause-effect relationship between a supernatural strategy and the following change. Can the author prove this without a doubt to back up such a bold statement?

If faith and belief in the supernatural is based on falsehoods, why it is so effective? And contagious?

In psychology we learn that having a religion or something to believe in is very healthy for a person, why was this perspective not included?

Really though teach? We got to work on this 'oldest article I can find' trend. =Þ