Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child

Subject: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 05:33 AM

First off, I would rather not get into the whole religion thing so, if you don't mind, keep it off here please :-)

On another thread someone was trying to get to the bottom of a rumour he had heard about a charity. It was compared to the rumours you heard about where babies come from. I don't recall ever being told anything about cabbages or gooseberry bushes but I have a vague recollection of a stork being involved. I am sure there are other things that you will recollect like getting 'the mange' from touching a dirty article or person, or about not standing on the cracks in pavements. Where do these tales come from? How did they originate? Are they global and do different cultures have different childhood rumours?

Just interested :-)

Cheers

DtG

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 05:47 AM

Of course babies are brought by storks.
Haven't you seen the documentary "Dumbo"?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Raggytash
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 05:52 AM

I never got the chance to find out if there was any truth in the rumour that Diane West dropped them for certain.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 06:01 AM

I believe there were similar rumours about Diana Dors. Hence the two different calls for '44' in Bingo, either:
All the fours, Diana Dors, or
All the fours, droopy drawers.

Or I could be making this up.
All rumours have to start somewhere, and they never seem to start with a named person, it is always "I heard from someone that . . .". Just like "Urban Myths".

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 06:27 AM

My mother told me where babies came from - but she never told me how they got there.

I do remember rumours, or beliefs, about food. My grandmother told me that you mustn't eat bread or cakes when they are still hot from the oven because that would give you indigestion.

She also said that if you had a sponge pudding (which was made using the same recipe as for sponge cake, but served with custard), you should never let it go cold because eating it cold would give you indigestion.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Doug Chadwick
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 07:02 AM

Beware of swans. They can break your arm with their beaks.

Has anybody actually met someone who's arm was broken by a swan?

DC

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: banjoman
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 07:13 AM

Eating chips on a Sunday was a sin.
I also was told that kettles were knitted from steel wool

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 07:23 AM

I was always told as a child, and I believed, that if I wore clean underwear, then I wouldn't be run over by a bus. Not sure whether or not I still believe it....too risky to tempt fate!

I was also told that if I smiled at a nun, my teeth would turn green. I've taken a chance on that one on many occasions with no ill effect.

And, again on a religious theme, my mother always insisted that only Catholic girls had their ears pierced. I later found this rumour to be incorrect on three levels....

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Greg F.
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 09:08 AM

Beware of swans. They can break your arm with their beaks.

Actually, its their wings used to break arms (and other things), and yes they can.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 09:10 AM

If you didn't eat your crusts your hair would never have curly hair. I used to tell my Mum that I didn't want curly hair anyway :-) I guess the origins of that are in stopping food wastage, but why link it with curly hair?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 09:11 AM

Your hair would never have curly hair? Maybe she should have said if I didn't eat my crusts I would start talking nonsense :-) You know what I mean anyway.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 09:20 AM

If you swallow an apple pip a tree will grow in your tummy. Strangely, this may be founded in truth - there were reports of a man who chocked while eating raw peas and one of them ended up in his lungs, where the moisture and warmth caused it to sprout and it started to grow.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 09:26 AM

Regarding underwear and buses, I was told that you must wear clean underwear because you might get run over by a bus. The idea was that you would be dressed respectably when you arrived at the hospital or morgue. In fact, the chances of your underwear still being clean after the accident are not great.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,#
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 09:33 AM

Anything to do with spinach and Popeye the feckin' sailor man.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 09:46 AM

Never swallow chewing gum because it'll get wound round your spindle.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Mrrzy
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 11:13 AM

My 3 older sisters, 5, 6 and 7 when I was born, had heard somewhere that one out of 5 children born is Chinese (this was the early '60s), so they wanted our parents to have another child after me so it would be Chinese.

I, on the other hand, never believed anything. There were way too many unbelievable things in fairy tales and big sister's stories, so (as a musical instance) when I moved to Virginia and saw Lynchburg and Danville on a map I was astounded, having assumed that since the mighty rough road between them was from a train wreck song that they were legendary places, not real.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 11:28 AM

"You should always mash bananas first rather than just eating them, as they will give you tummy-ache"()

It's well known that bananas disappeared from the UK during WW2, and when they reappeared after the war a lot of children had never seen one before. There was even a rumour that a child had died after eating a banana!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 12:46 PM

1. If you swallow a watermelon seed you'll get pregnant -- just look at Aunt Helen!

2. There is a tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean which connects (our town in west-central Illinois) with the Vatican. The Swiss Guards are going to invade the US by using it.

3. If there's ever an Atomic War our town will be one of the first attacked because of our railroad hub and the dam on the river.

4. Smoking stunts your growth.

5. Drinking coffee stunts your growth.

6. Drinking beer stunts your growth.

7. People put gum on seats in movie theaters so that when you get up your clothes will be ripped off.

8. If you stand on a certain bridge in Hanover, Germany and look back between your legs you'll see a ghost. (I don't remember the bridge.)

9. They make hot dogs out of dead people.

10. If you cough, sneeze, and fart at the same time you'll explode.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,michaelr
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 01:14 PM

If you make a weird face at noon, it will stay that way.

If you go "all the way" before you're married, you'll go blind.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 01:32 PM

you mustn't eat bread or cakes when they are still hot from the oven because that would give you indigestion.

You better believe it. But only homemade bread, cooked in the old fashioned way.
Joy used to make her own bread, mix first thing in the morning, put near Rayburn (aka AGA) to prove, go to milk cows, come back, pop in Rayburn, have breakfast and it is cooked! She gave me a loaf one day and it was so good I polished it off in one day and a bit. If you wonder what I am bellyaching about, it was just that. Not indigestion per se, but very noticeable guts ache.

Now why don't we get it with commercial bread? These days? 1) it is never straight out of the oven 2) they use a lot more bicarb (&/or Amonium Bicarbonate because it acts quicker and is cheaper) to get the carbon dioxide (fluffiness) into the dough during baking, & save on proving time. 3) there is a lot more stuff in there, in the UK they used to add calcium (aka chalk) plus a load of vitamins required by law from WW2 legislation. Cornflakes ditto.

My friend told me that when an ambulance passed you should hold your collar tip - for how long I can't remember even if it was specified, probably to prevent the occupant dying! That lad became a vicar! Gawd bless him (and she did).

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Penny S.
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 01:50 PM

You could pick up thunderbolts in the Warren at Folkestone. This is an area of landslips from the chalk cliffs over clay.

I understood that thunderbolts were meteorites, and I assumed that if they were that common there, I should be able to see them landing, so I spent one evening looking out of my window towards the area in the hopes of spotting them.

Not having seen any, I decided that there was no reason why they should be attracted to the place.

What the things were, I was eventually told, were pyrites nodules from the Chalk. Later I was told they were marcasite. Anyway, they are hand sized balls of iron sulphide with radial gold coloured crystals inside a rusty exterior, some smooth, some lumpy.

They can also be found in the quarries east of Lewes.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 02:38 PM

When there's a full moon, low in the sky, it looks very big. However if you bend down and look at it between your legs it's normal size!

This may or may not be true but one thing is certain - you look pretty daft if you test it out!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Anne Lister
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 03:17 PM

The ambulance thing - we had to hold our collar until we saw a four legged animal, and that way we'd never ride in one.
We had to eat our crusts in order to have strong white hair and big curly teeth ... my mum knew all about the Rev. Spooner.
Avoid treading on the gaps between the paving stones and get downstairs before the upstairs loo stopped flushing to avoid all kinds of problems with monsters and snakes and stuff. I remember getting very confused in Eastbourne (where my grandparents were living) because their pavements looked like blocks of Dairy Milk with the raised chunky bits and that was where I saw my first ever black person. Apparently he was very amused when I told my mum he was chocolate too - I'm glad he saw the compliment I was intending it to be!
If you were naughty, you wouldn't get presents from Father Christmas. You'd get a bag of soot instead.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 04:01 PM

This is a true story. In my neighborhood there was a boy, Richard, who was odd. His speech was funny, and he had a cringing manner. One day on the playground, somebody told me "Richard eats baby food." Richard was probably 11 or 12 at the time.

After a while (after way too long a time) we learned that Richard was almost deaf. It was a shame that the cheap little school he went to hadn't spotted it years earlier.

If I had children or grandchildren, I would tell them this story to show them that some people say cruel and brainless things about those who are different or handicapped. I would say, "Ask yourself if that story makes any sense at all."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: fat B****rd
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 04:10 PM

If I had too much salt on my meals my blood would dry up.
The lady two doors up had come home from hospital with a new baby because she'd broken her arm.
In Cleethorpes we used to hold our lapels if funeral cars went by.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 04:27 PM

There was a rhyme we used to sing about treading on the gaps between paving stones:

"If you tread on a nick
You'll marry a brick
And a beetle will come to your wedding"

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Bainbo
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 04:33 PM

Mike Harding: The Bogey Man

"My Gran told me that if I looked in the mirror
The Devil would come
And I'd have to run.
He'd chase me round
And he'd take me down
Far underground
And I'd never be found.
Then one day I looked in the mirror and the Devil he came in
But he looked just like the bloke what's courting our Maureen … "

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Bainbo
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 04:38 PM

"And me big brother told me if I trod on a nick
I'd be right thick
And I'd marry a brick
And to the wedding a beetle'd come
And sup up all the rum
And bugger up all the fun.
So for years I walked round
Staring at the ground
Til I smashed me head in on a lamppost
And was eight weeks coming round."

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 04:50 PM

From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 02:38 PM
When there's a full moon, low in the sky, it looks very big. However if you bend down and look at it between your legs it's normal size!
This may or may not be true but one thing is certain - you look pretty daft if you test it out!

True!
The moon close to the horizon appears bigger because you are comparing it to whatever else you can see, and because everything else (stars excepted) is closer, your sense of perspective makes the moon seem larger that it is when viewed in the middle of the sky (where it seems small and isolated).
Viewing it through your legs gives you an immediate & reliable sense of proportion, as your legs will be the same size whether you're viewing a moon near the horizon, or in clear space.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 06:09 PM

Brilliant stuff - Carry on folks :-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Paul Burke
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 06:51 PM

Dave- are you Bogbrush?

You can catch VD from brass doorknobs. My young sister had a violent row with Mum, mother defending the relative innocence of hardware. sister claiming scientific edge- "Aunty Sadie told me. and she's a nurse!"

I waited a few days, and left some educational leaflets next to my sister's bed when she was out. My mum thanked me for it years later.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Frank
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 08:48 PM

Looking at the Moon through your legs certainly gives a different perspective.
I quite often look at the stars in the Southern Hemisphere, and I find if you face South, bend over and look between your legs you can Uranus.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Rapparee
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 12:38 AM

Play with yourself and you'll go blind, have hair (sometimes green) on your palms, and/or your equipment would fall off "and shatter."

If you swallow your gum it will stay inside you and all the gum you swallow will eventually become a big ball of gum and block up your insides and you'll die. This happened to a kid down the street so it's true.

Don't drink Coke because if you put lunch meat in Coke and wait a few days the lunch meat will dissolve. (If Coke doesn't pass through you in a few days you've got bigger problems!)

Nuns were naked under their habits and were bald.

Saltpeter kills sexual desire and the Boy Scouts/Army/Navy/Boys' Schools put it in the mashed potatoes to prevent "problems."

A boy in a different grade looked at a dirty picture and went crazy. He's been locked away for years and years.

Kissing makes a girl pregnant.

Wearing yellow on Thursday (or other colors on other days) means you're a queer.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Ebbie
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 02:20 AM

Stop your dog eating grass- it can wrap itself around the dog's intestines, you know, causing great problems.

A friend from the Czech Republic told me that they were cautioned to avoid touching the dark end of a banana peel- that is where it is snake bit.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 02:37 AM

"If you were naughty, you wouldn't get presents from Father Christmas. You'd get a bag of soot instead."

A switch and two lumps of coal

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 05:01 AM

Never swallow chewing gum because it wraps around your "insides"

Never tread on the cracks in the pavement - no suggestion of what bad thing would happen, we just didn't do it.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 05:21 AM

Drinking too much vinegar kills off your blood cells.

Someone must have had a bit of science know how to make that one up!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 05:46 AM

'Never tread on the cracks in the pavement - no suggestion of what bad thing would happen'
.,,.

Yes, there was where I came from: the bears would get you!

In A A Milne's poem 'Lines and Squares', from "When we were very young", the narrator talks of walking to avoid the bears

Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines in the street

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Desi C
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 06:27 AM

I'd almost forgotten, buy my Granny used to say I was born under a cabbage, my brother and sister under other garden growths! But She did make it sound funny and I don't think I ever actually believed it. Actually after we moved to England and aged a very naieve 14, a school mate told me where Babies really come from, I was so disgusted thinking he was being offensive about my Mum that I punched him one!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 07:14 AM

Nigel Parsons
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 04:50 PM

From: GUEST
Date: 12 Nov 15 - 02:38 PM
"When there's a full moon, low in the sky, it looks very big. However if you bend down and look at it between your legs it's normal size!
This may or may not be true but one thing is certain - you look pretty daft if you test it out!

True!
The moon close to the horizon appears bigger because you are comparing it to whatever else you can see, and because everything else (stars excepted) is closer, your sense of perspective makes the moon seem larger that it is when viewed in the middle of the sky (where it seems small and isolated).
Viewing it through your legs gives you an immediate & reliable sense of proportion, as your legs will be the same size whether you're viewing a moon near the horizon, or in clear space."


THIS IS NOT TRUE

The moon (or sun) appears to be bigger close to the horizon because the image you are seeing is magnified by moisture in the atmosphere through which you see it. Sometimes, if there are strips of cloud in front of it, the magnification varies so that you see a dumb-bell shaped or egg-shaped moon or sun.
We had a discussion about it on mudcat some years ago:

Subject: RE: BS: Spring
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 25 Feb 11 - 12:20 PM

"I'd never heard of the 'green flash' or 'green rim' before this thread, but the lowest picture in Micca's link [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_flash] seems to confirm something I have long suspected - the apparent size of the rising or setting sun or full moon when it is just above the horizon isn't just an illusion caused by its proximity to the trees and rooftops, as many 'experts' claim, but is caused by magnification when it is seen through the atmosphere near the horizon."

From: JohnInKansas
Date: 26 Feb 11 - 07:08 PM

"topsie (12:20 pm):

the apparent size of the rising or setting sun or full moon when it is just above the horizon isn't just an illusion caused by its proximity to the trees and rooftops, as many 'experts' claim, but is caused by magnification when it is seen through the atmosphere near the horizon."

The same magnification is responsible for what's called the "ephemeris jump" (you can look that up) noticed mostly for a setting sun or moon. The sun/moon appears to approach the horizon at "normal rate" until what looks like about the last 5 degrees (where it "should" take about 20 minutes more to reach the horizon) but "plops" out of sight in a minute or less. The effect is especially visible when seen from an airplane at 20 or 30 kft altitude.

John

If John in Kansas agreed with me I MUST be right.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 11:27 AM

On occasions when I passed on a piece of dubious folk knowledge I had the reply "Having a little knowledge is a dangerous thing".

This left me thinking that having a lot of knowledge must be really dangerous.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 11:43 AM

What do curly-haired kids get told about eating crusts? Just wondered.
I used to be told not to pull faces because the wind would change and I'd stick like that. Never believed it though.
And knowlegeable friends at school claimed that masturbation made your thing bigger. It only occurred to me later in life that this activity coincides with puberty, during which your thing gets bigger anyway. Coincidence? Is there a female version of this myth? Just askin'.
JK

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 11:56 AM

Nice to see you, John. You must have eaten all your crusts to get that curly pig tail :-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,crazy little woman
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 12:13 PM

combining coca cola and aspirin will kill you.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Anne Neilson
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 12:47 PM

Near Glasgow in the early 1950s we had a superstition about avoiding the cracks on the pavement (not at all PC) -- step on a crack and you'll marry a black man. (Goodness knows where this came from as our neighbours were all white families!)

My mother's siblings had emigrated to Africa in 1948, to Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia (as was) and to South Africa, and we were used to letters and information from those places as well as post-cards; and my mother told me that I saw some black men near the fountain in Kelvingrove Park, just beside the University of Glasgow, around 1950 and said, "Look, there are Africans!" -- seemingly they looked round and smiled before my mother's attempts to shoosh me could work…

We also had a firm promotion on eating up your crusts to achieve curly hair and eating carrots to sharpen your eyesight.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 12:59 PM

Ok, this is one of my very earliest memories...

Age 4 or 5, around the time I started infants school, I believed for a short time what other kids must have told me..
that the world was flat and rain happened as a consequence of god and the angels flushing their toilets.... 😬

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 01:08 PM

Not just as a child - I remember from my student days a tale that you could get drunk quicker (and hence more cheaply) if you drank beer through a straw rather than just out of the glass.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 01:24 PM

Saltpeter kills sexual desire is this a corruption of the army tactic of putting Bromide in tea for the same purpose? Myth or true our cadet week at Kimnel Park North Wales the tea did taste pretty vile. It was an all male teen affair in tents! I do remember being issued with rifles and blank cartridges some of which made their way home.

I never got the cartridges to fire by throwing bolders at them, but in defeat we (me & John Fiddler of "Medicine Head" fame) put a candle under the cap and nothing happened so we walked away. About a minute later we head a bang and a whistling into the distance over the canal. Thankfully it was open ground with no-one around.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 01:36 PM

the straw trick - yeah we did that with bottles of red wine when we were 14 or 15.

More stupidly aged 17, we believed the wise advice of older [early 20s] hippies we knew,
so became keen purchasers of benylin cough medicine and kaolin and morphine mixture...
Those dastardly hippies also convinced us to drink the most disgusting home brewed poppy tea..

There was also some other vile local natural plant infusion, but i can't remember what it was
[not mushroomz - they actually did work quite nicely]

I remember we puked quite a lot in our late teens thanks to our trusting the the hippy equivalent of old wives tales... 😣

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 13 Nov 15 - 02:14 PM

"There was also some other vile local natural plant infusion, but i can't remember what it was"
might have been morning glory seeds...???

A quick google shows young folks are just as stupidly experimental...

But what to us 40 years ago was counter culture hippy folklore passed down by older wiser dungeons and dragons players..

is now an organized world wide 'legal high' capitalist industry... 😠

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.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 19 Nov 15 - 05:19 AM

"soldiers were cool and their officers intelligent"

Don't know about that, but my mother told me to have nothing to do with RAF men because they would love you and leave you. If only ... (took years to get rid of him).

As for the radiators and chilblains, I have found this to be true.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 Nov 15 - 07:24 AM

radiators and chilblains
I think there is good evidence for that, but radiators have to be hot.
Not that I heard this but it was an urban legend that: if you put your feet in a po it would help with chilblains. I think it did depend on there being contents and what those contents were!
You used to be able to get a tin of chilblain ointment, it had the look & consistency of soft beeswax and a different smell. Don't remember it working that well.
To keep feet warm in the cold snow (and presumably ward off chilblains) we were told stamp our feet as we walked. That seemed to work on the warming front, can't remember doing those kind of analyses on chilblains - I was only 6/7 at the time.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Raggytash
Date: 19 Nov 15 - 07:28 AM

You should have listened to your Mother Topsie, you were warned!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,punkfolkrocker
Date: 19 Nov 15 - 01:35 PM

My mother warned me to "Beware of those little Blodwyns"....?????

when I told her there were quite a few South Welsh Valley Girls on my degree and in Halls of Residence.

did I listen..???

Over 30 years later I'm still with the first one that enticed & claimed me...

I think I've had plenty enough time to experience what mother was implying..... 😜

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 19 Nov 15 - 06:17 PM

Raggytash, although my mother's warning was sound, the reason she gave was completely wrong.

As for chilblains, I believe it is to do with the circulation, which is why stamping might help. We used to get chilblains on our feet when we had to stand in the cold and wet, waiting for the bus to school.
An old woman who lived in a crumbling cottage in the woods told us that we should treat chilblains with wall penny-wort. We dutifully collected the plant and rubbed our toes with it. The effect was probably achieved by the massage involved in rubbing our toes with the plant, more than by the plant extracts themselves.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Nov 15 - 06:34 PM

Wall pennywort is a cure for piles. Just rub the leaves on your sore bum. It's also an edible plant. My personal recommendation, as a botany graduate, is that you use different batches of wall pennywort for these two purposes. I'd also suggest that you should wash your hands between the two operations, though you probably won't die if you don't.

[As I don't want anyone to be poisoned, the wall pennywort I'm talking about is Umbilicus rupestris.]

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: JHW
Date: 20 Nov 15 - 04:23 PM

'if you didn't take your Christmas decorations down on 6th Jan' they would turn into Goblins - though i found out later only applies to greenery decorations
And of course if you firstfoot yourself you will have a year's bad luck.
Most New Year's at this address I have firstfooted myself but whether I've had a year's bad luck is hard to quantify

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: GUEST,Montreal88
Date: 22 Nov 15 - 10:49 PM

Don't go under that bridge - trolls live there.
Horseradish is made by grinding up a horse's ears.
Don't go swimming until two hours after eating.
I broke a mirror when I was 6 years old - I still remember the day seven years later - I was so relieved!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 09:35 AM

if you firstfoot yourself *** I have firstfooted myself ***

??????????

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 09:42 AM

Sounds like an interesting variant on an old denunciatory interjection, innit —

"Oh go and firstfoot yourself!"

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Harmonium Hero
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 07:00 PM

Penny S: My experience of girls trying to faint was at junior school, where we didn't have P.E. Maybe they just wanted to be sent home - can't say I blame them for that.
Pig's can't swim, as they would slit their throats with their trotters. Aparently this isn't true.
My mother and her sisters were told by her mother or her great aunt on 1st Jan, that if they went out for a walk, they would meet a man with as many noses as there were days in the year. It was a few years before they cottoned on to the fact that, as it was the first day of the year, there was at that stage only one day...
JK

Subject: RE: Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Nov 15 - 09:14 PM

My gran, who died in1979, always used to say to us scruffy lads, "Pull yer socks up, yer nose is bleeding!" Never did get me head round that one!