Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 03:04 PM

I can vouch for the drinking alcohol through a straw. At the age of 19, a hardened drinker I thought, a colleague made a bet that I couldn't drink two pints of Guinness through a straw. He lost, I managed three but boy did I know about it !!!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Anne Lister
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 03:39 PM

As to the crusts = curly hair thing, my older brother and one sister (there were five of us) had naturally curly hair, as did my Mum, and I don't think we ever associated the crusts with that result. Or we were far too sceptical to take it seriously in the first place.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 05:23 PM

If you drink alcoholic drinks through a straw will it increase the amount of alcohol vapor that you inhale?
If so could get you drunk quicker, like spilling it in a sauna.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 05:46 PM

Lavatorium graffiti:

It's no use standing on the seat
The germs round 'ere can jump six feet

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Bizibod
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 07:06 PM

I was told that if you collected a sufficient number of dewdrop cobwebs on top of one another in a loop of twig you would make glass.Tried and tried.I suppose it did make a "window" of sorts where all the dewdrops joined together, but it wasn't glass, more wet cobweb....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 08:32 PM

As kids, my friends and I would walk down the
sidewalk, avoiding the cracks in the concrete,
and chanting over and over, "Step on a crack!
Break your mother's back!"

I knew it wasn't so, but for years I would catch
myself unthinkingly avoiding the cracks in the walk.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 06:41 AM

From Carly Simon, in the song It Was So Easy:

"I remember when we took such care to step never on the cracks,
No only on the squares
Or else we'd be abducted by the bears"

Is that a common one in Yankistan?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,silver
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 06:53 AM

Never really believed in any of these, but anyway:

A variant on the "eat the crusts" theme: if you eat burned crusts, you will get a good singing voice!

You will catch polio if you play with fallen autumn leaves.

Breaking a mirror will give you seven years of bad luck.

There's an ugly goblin living in the well, and he'll catch little children, so don't go near.

If a girl picks seven different flowers on Midsummer's Eve, and puts them under her pillow, she will dream of the man she is going to marry. (Special for Sweden, I believe.)

If you sing and make noise before breakfast, you will be in trouble before nightfall (originally: in a hawk's ass. My Mom's saying. She couldn't explain exactly how this would happen.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 07:51 AM

You need to get to sleep before the sandman comes, we were told. Bloody terrifying!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 01:03 PM

A post on here reminded me of a couple more. One of my first jobs was a factory next to a pub cfalled The Greyhound in Birmingham, known as The Scrumply house as it only sold various types of Cider. Old guys in there told us that flicking fag ash in the cider made it much stronger, but it had to be Park Drive cigs and tipped didn't work. Also dropping an Aspirin in! And after that we should leave the pint on top of the old stove in the bar. Did it work? Well, I got so drunk X'mas lunchtime that I was literally in bed recovering for a full week!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Western Trails
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 01:28 PM

I remember hearing that if you swallow gum it won't be digested for seven years.
And that a woman with a big puffy hairdo once had spiders living in her hair.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Lin
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 07:46 PM

Funny, I posted to this yesterday but for some reason it did not seem like message got submitted (I can't find it) so trying again.

When I was a child my parent's told me that the way they get babies is that parent's are taken up in a small airplane - up very high where all the babies are floating around in the sky. Then the pilot slows down and the parent's reach out the window and choose whatever baby they want and that is how they got me.   
I believed this story!!!!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Bill D
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 08:34 PM

There various rumors/stories/offers in pop culture that circulated widely in the 50s.

"If you collected enough cigarette packs, (was in only one brand?) the company(s) would donate an iron lung to sick children,"

There was supposed to be 'contest' to see who could make the most words from "Planters Peanuts". No one ever said where to send your list..(which would have been half the dictionary) or who would check the entries, or what prize might be gained. I think my brother & I did hundreds of words before suspecting something was awry.

There was rumor that WWII Jeeps, packed in cosmolene, could be bought as government surplus for $100 or so. They were supposed to be sitting on a dock somewhere. The stories evidently originated as a scam by guys who had a 'contact' and for a $25 deposit, they would get your name on the list. I very briefly wondered if it was true.

And of course there were the rumors about bank robber John Dillinger's penis being 'unusually large' and kept by the Smithsonian.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 09:51 PM

Not to speak of Errol Flynn's....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: frogprince
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 10:29 PM

"...cigarette packs..." I always heard it was coupons that came in (or on?) Raleigh packs.

The price I heard for the jeeps was consistently $50.00. A family acquaintance told my father that he planned to get one, and Dad told him to try to get one for him too. In that instance no one tried to con anyone out of a deposit or otherwise scam them. I don't know if Dad actually considered it credible or not; he did mention some practical purpose he could use one for. I didn't go so far as fully assuming we were going to get one, but I had some hopeful daydreams of playing around in hills with one.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 10:31 PM

We were taught that that a "gnome" was a toad-like thing that lived under mushrooms.

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

We have hence discovered it is far more like a common garden slug.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: LadyJean
Date: 14 Nov 15 - 11:11 PM

When Barry Goldwater was running for president, it was accepted as fact by the kids I knew that if he was elected we would have school on Saturdays and one month of summer vacation. Hence the rhyme my parents wouldn't let me recite:
Goldwater Goldwater 64!
Couldn't get in the bathroom door.
So he did it on the floor.
Goldwater Goldwater 64!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,JF
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 05:44 AM

It's complete nonsense that swans can break your arm or leg with their wing. Their bones aren't nearly as strong as a human being's.

What actually happens is that they rear up and give the victim such a surprise that he falls over and breaks something.

Swans are known to drown unwary swimmers by attacking them and causing them to drown from exhaustion. The solution is to grab the swan by the neck and hold its head under the water.

A dead swan makes a useful buoyancy aid.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 07:57 AM

Roast swan, anybody?

Or are we expected to hand over our newly acquired buoyancy aid to the queen?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 12:33 PM

Bad luck to kill a spider ???


I believe every home should have at least one bathroom spider
and a corner of the ceiling where webs are left unvacuumed..

When I'm brushing my teeth or sat on the bog, I like watching bathroom spider go about it's daily routine.

Quite relaxing really.

When I'm bored I have occasionally fed them a half dead but still moving fly or mosquitoe with a pair of the wife's eyebrow tweezers.

Sometimes their spurt of growth after one good feed seems quite noticeable.

The wife however, doesn't share my enthusiasm and takes any opportunity to wash them down the plughole.

Her fear of arachnids clearly over rides any superstition regarding bad luck.....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 01:26 PM

No spider is ever murdered in our house. Spiders are amazing beasts, utterly beautiful. Have a close look at one with a magnifying glass and you'll never kill one again. Also, most spiders found in UK houses will perish if you put them outside. And a spider washed down the plughole is doomed. Put them under the fridge or washing machine where they'll live quite happily on silverfish and the like.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,punkfolrocker
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 01:40 PM

I keep telling the wife that the reason the big spiders are so big
is because of eating all the other creepy crawlies in the house that we don't like.

But sadly to no avail.

Most recent bathroom spider seems to have mysteriously disappeared today...???

fingers crossed it's under the bath.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 02:05 PM

I welcome most spiders, but I get rid of those false widows that arrived when next door decided they needed decking. They look very pretty (the spiders, not the people next door), but I'm told they have a nasty bite so I'm not risking it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Penny S.
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 03:12 PM

In my teens, I was told that an aspirin in Coca Cola would knock you out.

And when beehive hairdos were in fashion, that some girl had found a mouse's nest in hers - now that goes back to the eighteenth century wigs, I think.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 15 Nov 15 - 04:33 PM

Re Guest Silver's post above, 14 nov 0653: my mother had a jingle from her childhood re this belief -- "Sing before breakfast — cry before supper."

Did no-one else learn that if you took the last biscuit or cake from the plate, you would die an old maid [boys included iirc]?

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 16 Nov 15 - 11:00 AM

My mum's version was "whistle before breakfast - cry before supper".

There was also "play with fire - wet the bed".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Mr Red
Date: 16 Nov 15 - 04:30 PM

The Greyhound in Birmingham - went there once just for the cider. They had spaghetti sandwiches wrapped in cellophane behind the bar. I kid you not. Maybe the microwaved them, maybe not.

beehive hairdo I was told by Cynthia Fiddler (sister of John Fiddler of Medicine Head) about the girl who got a beehive and sprayed and sprayed to save on the hairdressers. A fly got in, drilled into her skull and laid eggs which ate into her brain and killed her. Now I took that as myth then but I told that to my niece recently in NZ and she said she heard the same story only it was Rastafarian Dreadlocks. What goes around comes around.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: LadyJean
Date: 16 Nov 15 - 07:59 PM

Re. arachnids, my father informed me that if you killed a spider it would bring on rain.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 03:43 AM

If you pull a leg off a spider it runs round in ever decreasing circles till it disappears. I was a little older before I worked out how it disappeared.

An old garage attached to a pub down the road was haunted by the blue lady.

If you bought Brenda Grainger a sherbet fountain she'd show you her knickers. (More chance of her showing you her knuckles.)

The woman across the road was a bit "ten Bob on the mantlepiece."

The guard dog at a local factory had killed three boys in its time.

Licorice bungs you up.

Sitting on girders gives you piles.

Something about girls combing their hair by candle in their mum's dressing table mirror, they see the man they will marry.

Playing with yourself can make you go blind. (20:20 vision in my 50s and one arm more muscular than the other. Hah!)

Anyone black / Asian / mentally or physically incapacitated / homosexual was different.

Jesus and God existed.



Funny how we grow out of bullshit we learned as a kid. (When I was 17 I found it wasn't sherbert fountain after all, but a brandy and babycham did the trick nicely.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 09:05 AM

My sister insisted her first child was an immaculate conception, but my dad still got the shotgun out and the marriage went ahead!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Paul Reade
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 09:31 AM

I had a friend who swore that eating liver gave you a "curly tongue". He never defined what a "curly tongue" was though!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 10:12 AM

That last post remimds me of something I heard - not as a child, but as an adult; that someone had put some liver in the fridge next to a pint of milk, and when they opened the fridge later, the liver had wrapped itself around the milk bottle. Sorry - drifting into the related realms of Apocryphal Tales....
JK

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 10:45 AM

sensible childhood indoctrination with hygiene health and safety ?

"You must never eat or drink in the toilet !!!"

As a small kid I made sure I swallowed all spit and cleared my mouth before entering the bathroom
for fear of some unspecified terror....


until teenage swagger of standing at a pub urinal with pint in one hand and mouthful of pork scratchings
defeated childhood anxieties...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 10:49 AM

I could understand my liver wrapping itself around a whisky bottle...

Not eating meat on a Friday was dismissed when I innocently ate a black pudding on the way home from the flicks one night before I realised what day it was. Nothing bad happened but I was a bit worried for 10 minutes or so...

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 12:30 PM

A bit of drift if I may, following last post:

I was teaching at a school in Stevenage in the mid-60s when the then Pope lifted the conventional expectation that Catholics should refrain from eating meat on a Friday. The following Friday, a boy on my lunch table went to the hatch as usual to get his fish lunch provided for RCs by the dinner ladies. "You know, John," I said, "you don't have to eat fish on Fridays any longer. The Pope says it's OK for you to eat meat."

"Never mind the Pope, Sir," he replied. "It's my mum."

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 12:54 PM

Killing a spider has always brought on bad luck. Huckleberry Finn iirc went thru all sorts of rituals and rigmaroles after he flicked one off his shoulder and it fell into the candle.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 02:46 PM

I daren't tell you what we used to call black puddings either. I'd have the PC brigade in uproar ;-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 05:03 PM

Don't even think of telling me until I've eaten the Bury black pudding that lieth in my fridge.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 05:41 PM

Stick it in a hotspot Mr Shaw.

Our butcher does excellent black pudding sausages. Dave the Gnome's train of thought could run riot. Me? I serve them on a bed of puy lentils with a garlic and red wine sauce.

Another one. A lad of mixed race at school told us he was lucky because he could choose between marrying a black or a white woman. We were all jealous.

The illuminated trams in Blackpool, only people who lived in Blackpool could travel on them. (Yet I'm sure I saw my cousin on one.)

If you wee in the swimming baths your teeth fall out. (Bloody true, it seemed.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 05:49 PM

If you saw an ambulance you would sonn ride in one, unless you immediately recited. "Cross my fingers, Cross my toes. Don't let me ride In one of those." Crossing one's toes was not that easy, I recall.

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 07:37 PM

That sounds pretty good, guest, though that particular dish cosa nostra uses italian fennel-infested sausages instead of the black pudding. In a little town in Andalucia, Canjayar in the Alpujarras, yer man in the main bar in the village square presented us with his latest tapas invention, "huevos sorpresas". Basically, it was a bap containing a fried egg, the "surprise" being that there was also a bloody great big wodge of the local morcilla in there as well! It slightly shocked non-black pudding-eating Mrs Steve, though she devoured it manfully. I loved it so much that I had seconds! My way with Bury black pud is very simple. I strip off the skin, slice it up and fry it for a few minutes in butter. I'll live forever, I tell you!

Anyway, that's serious thread drift. If you sit on a cold stone wall you'll get piles. Avoid.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 17 Nov 15 - 09:59 PM

Folk rumours for the next generation.....


"If you french kiss a dead pig you'll one day grow up to become Prime Minister"... 😘

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 18 Nov 15 - 06:25 AM

I did not put my penis in that...

Oh, hang on, wasn't that some American bloke?

Eeeeeh. Bury black puds. You have never lived unless you have wandered round Bury market late on a Saturday afternoon up to your knees in black pudding skins.

:D tG

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 18 Nov 15 - 09:17 AM

Frogprince said, in part:

"...cigarette packs..." I always heard it was coupons that came in (or on?) Raleigh packs.

True. My mother was a heavy smoker, always Raleighs, and she saved
and redeemed the coupons attached to the packs. I know she got a
card table, and another time a small cabinet-table for the living
room. I don't remember the other items she got from the Raleigh coupons,
but I know we had a running joke that half of our apartment's
furnishings were obtained that way.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 18 Nov 15 - 12:07 PM

Speaking of swimming baths, it was claimed that if you did a belly-flop off the top diving board, your belly would split open. I knew at least one boy who claimed to have seen this happen. Mind you, another boy claimed he had once done it three times.
And girls always seemed to be trying things they believed wuld make them faint. Can't remember any precise receipes, but it seemed to involve things like biting your knckles and blowing hard...stuff like that. Never saw any of them succeed though. Strange creatures, girls.
And if you didn't take your Christmas decorations down on 6th Jan, you had to leave them up until Easter. No-one ever said what would happen if you didn't abide by this law.We often left ours up for weeks, but not until Easter. We didn't get struck by a bolt from the blue or anything. Quite disappointing really.
JK

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Nov 15 - 12:17 PM

"combining coca cola and aspirin will kill you."
When I started going to The Cavern, in Liverpool ( a wonderful Jazz Club then) the only drink you could get was Coca Cola which was drunk in great quantities until the rumour spread that it would make you impotent (important at that age - ah well!!)
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Penny S.
Date: 18 Nov 15 - 01:22 PM

Making you faint was to get out of PE. What's so odd about that?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Penny S.
Date: 18 Nov 15 - 01:29 PM

The eater of the last item on the plate was guaranteed a handsome husband and £1000 a year. Oh Yeah!

Sitting on wet grass gives you piles.
Sitting on the radiator gives you piles.

What are piles? No explanation offered.

Putting your cold hands on the radiator will give you chilblains.

Penny

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 19 Nov 15 - 03:42 AM

Back to the sausages. I used to use Italian herbed sausages a la Nigella Lawson's recipe but one day found the sausages in the freezer which I thought were them turned out to be some black pudding ones I had forgot about. Never looked back. Lots of parsley sprinkled on top before serving.

Sitting on whatever was indeed said to give you the Nobby Stiles. Although galloping dysentery is guaranteed to tempt the buggers out, trust me.

In our house the eater of the last item on the plate was invariably the dog. The item was usually over stewed cabbage or farting crackers. In later life I have started liking brussels but then!

As children, we were led to believe soldiers were cool and their officers intelligent. We played British Bulldogs in the playground and believed everything the school curriculum wanted us to believe.

As a teenager, I was told beer ended at Nottingham. In a way, it did but don't put today's values on it eh?

The girl next door told me the blue lady would bite my toes in bed. Mind you, she told me lots of things. I reckon it was her that said smelling dandelions made you wee your trousers. She told me Jesus could see everything I did. That must have been riveting for him.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Nov 15 - 04:22 AM

Don't go near the canal edge if the water is covered in duckweed because Jenny Greenteeth will pull you in and drown you.