Folklore: Rumours you believed as a child

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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,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 - 05:47 AM

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

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