Down the Rabbit Hole with Old Wives' Tales

Words by Tan Hui Xin

Grandma: “If you see a broom in the morning, bad luck’s ahead.”

Mother: “Always knock before entering a hotel room.”

Father: -

These are just a fraction of Old Wives’ Tales I have heard growing up. Don’t worry there will be more as you read on. To start off, the origin of Old Wives’ Tales is rather unknown but many have speculated that Old Wives’ Tales was as its name suggests - what wives or mothers told the younger generation to encourage or scare themfrom (doing) certain things.

“An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.”

For instance, I am sure every single human on this planet has heard of this Old Wives’ Tale: An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

If you have not heard of this, I would love to know where you have lived. Such phrases serve to encourage or deter certain behaviors from children. Hence, in this article, I will be doing every bored soul a favor by going down the rabbit hole of Old Wives’ Tales while (possibly) debunking fact from fiction - with the help of my fellow UB peers. So to all curious George(s) and Georgina(s), read on.

“Never Give Watches as Presents.”

If you are like me, you may have pondered (please tell me I am not the only one) which sad human died receiving watches and whose “luck” got passed on to his or her acquaintances that shot this phrase to infamy. So thanks to the wonders of technology a.k.a. Google, I have been able to find out possible reasons why this phrase is especially popular among the Chinese who have long associated bad luck to clocks and watches - basically any object that represents time.

This is because, the Chinese word: 送钟 (sòng zhōng), which means to gift clocks, sounds similar to another Chinese word: 送终 (sòng zhōng) which means to attend a funeral. To put it simply, when you gift a clock or watch, to the Chinese culture, you are basically “gifting” bad luck upon a person to (touch wood, hold a cross, burn some incense, etc.) die earlier. As such, due to the deadly similarity of these particular words (yes that was my attempt at a pun), most Chinese would avoid gifting a clock as a birthday present - that is if any of us youngsters actually listened to our parents...

Leaving behind grains of rice

To all those singles out there here’s another advice from your ancestors.

“If you leave behind any grains of rice while eating, your future spouse will have lots of pimples.”

Not sure about you but this is one of the Old Wives’ Tales I have heard from my mother time and time again growing up.

To a child like me though, such a saying did not work. That is because I certainly did not require any encouragement finishing my meals and honestly, I could not have cared less about whether or not my future spouse would have pimples because I did not want a future spouse then. Not sure if I will be changing my mind 10 years down the road though... But to all those picky or fussy eaters, I have heard this being said by parents in Kopitiams and by my aunts to their kids all too often.

Meaning behind Old Wives Tales

On a more serious note, as I started to learn more about Old Wives’ Tales, I could not help but wonder the actual meaning behind them.

“Oh, that’s just an Old Wives’ Tale.”

For so long we have responded to Old Wives’ Tales with absurd laughter and stigma but rarely anything more, even more so now, with the pursuit and widespread belief of science as the ultimate truth. Even the Cambridge dictionary seems to agree with its definition as follows: “a piece of advice or a theory, often related to matters of health, that was believed in the past but is now known to be wrong”, with the iconic Merriam-Webster echoing similar sentiments: “an often traditional belief that is not based on fact”.

Hence, it is not far-fetched for me to think that Old Wives’ Tales seems to be one of the tools in which society has utilized to naturalize traits of irrationality in women, especially older women. Such things are not atypical in the language world, for which sayings like “Oh, stop acting like such a girl” (associating girls to weakness) have aided in perpetuating certain norms or gender characteristics about females. The dangerous part comes when we naturalize them and they fade into the background, becoming the natural order of things whereby we do not think twice before saying such things. This is more problematic when such phrases or names carry certain negative connotations about women and girls whereby if we keep hearing them, we may unknowingly start internalizing certain beliefs about women. Perhaps, we could just brush this off as me overthinking, but I could not help but wonder as a female, the significance of naming it Old Wives’ Tales instead of something else.

Cultural or racial significance

On a lighter note, as I fell deeper into the rabbit hole of Old Wives’ Tales, I started entertaining the possibility of cultural or racial specificity. This is so because many Old Wives’ Tales seem to be especially popular among the Chinese whereby there are Chinese reasonings for such tales (just like the one I mentioned in the previous paragraph). After much soul searching, I quickly came to the conclusion that Old Wives’ Tales does indeed have some geographic specificity. For instance, “If you point to the moon, your ear will drop off.” This saying that some of us may have heard of seems to have originated from Chinese mythology. The reasoning behind this saying lies with being, pointing with the index finger at the moon is disrespectful to the moon goddess Chang’e ( 嫦娥 ) who would retaliate by cutting your ear clean off, or at least cut it slightly. This then affirmed the possibility of a cultural specificity for Old Wives’ Tales.

Since we live in Singapore, where we have a myriad of cultures, I wanted to see if the cultural specificity of Old Wives’ Tales’ holds in Singapore. So being the curious Georgina I was, I took this to instagram by asking UB students what were some of the Old Wives’ Tales they have heard of and the reasoning behind them - whichthank goodness some people replied.

References: Here are what they had to say

1. A. FoodCliqueLover. (2020). “Don’t trim your nails at night or an evil spirit might steal them and impersonate you.” Retrived on 13 August 2020.

2. I. LoveMala. (2020). “Don’t sleep in front of a mirror or a ghost will steal your soul.” Retrived on 13 August 2020.

3. U. Bufo. (2020). “Consuming a part of an animal makes that respective part of you better. (pig’s leg = strong legs etc.)” Retrived on 13 August 2020.

4. K. Kampung. (2020). “If you eat watermelon seeds, (the) watermelon plant will start growing from your brain.” Retrived on 13 August 2020.

Conclusion

These are some of the Old Wives’ Tales shared by UB students. Interestingly, I discovered with the help of my dearest friend, Google, that Koreans and Japanese have a similar superstition shared by Student A though the reasonings are different. According to the Japanese, they believed that cutting your nails at night would mean that you would not be present when your parents die. As opposed to Koreans who believe that when mice eat your leftover nail clippings after you cut them at night, they can turn into humans and steal your soul. Hence, horrific imagery aside, this is one of the Old Wives’ Tale I found that supports my theory of cultural specificity and Old Wives’ Tales.

Before I end this rambling for good, let me just part with one last thing. Maybe it is high time as a progressively egalitarian society to bring husbands into the picture and come up with Old Husbands’ Tales. You never know, the husbands may be feeling a little left out over the last few centuries. What do you think?