Brian in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reports that whenever someone dropped a fork in his house, his mother would say Fork to the floor, company’s at the door. She’d also say If your palm itches, you’re going to come into money, and If your nose itches, you’re going to kiss a fool, and often repeated a superstition that if the first person to enter your house on New Year’s Day was a dark-haired person who gave you silver, you’d have good luck the rest of the year. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “His Mother’s Sayings”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Oh, hi. Brian Regan here from Pittsburgh, PA.
Hi, Brian. Welcome.
What’s up? What can I help you with?
Well, I have a story that my mother used to say, or saying, that basically fork to the floor, companies at the door. Which means if you dropped your fork while eating, she would say something like that. Fork to the floor, companies at the door. Nice.
And I never, I don’t know if that’s just within her family or if it had something to do with where she grew up or lived on a farm or whatever. But I also heard her sister and my aunt say the same thing. If somebody drops a fork, she’d say, oh, company’s coming. And I never knew, you know, the origin to that. I never questioned it.
She’s had other sayings, too, that, you know, if your hand itches, you’re going to come into money. If your palm itches, you’re going to come into money. If your nose itches, you’re going to kiss a fool. And then the last one was on New Year’s Day, if the first person who enters your house is dark and gives you a piece of silver, it’ll be good luck throughout the year.
So she was one for these old superstitions and these bits of folklore then, huh?
Yeah.
And again, I don’t know the origins, and I was wondering if you somehow ever heard of these things.
Absolutely, yeah. When I was a kid, I read all the folklore in the library that I could get my hands on. And some of these, I still have some folklore books. And I can tell you a few things here and there about this stuff.
For example, when your palm itches, you’re going to come into some money. There is actually a mention in Shakespeare and Julius Caesar indirectly related to this. There’s a line having to do with greed, though, where it’s the idea that you expect money to cross your palm. But this is centuries old, this idea that if your palm inches, you’re expected to come into money.
Now, there are variations on it, too. Sometimes if your left one inches, you’re going to give money out. If your right one inches, you’re going to receive money. There’s all kinds of variations. A lot of people have mentioned that one.
So I’ve heard that before. That wasn’t as uncommon as the other one. Now, the fork one, a lot of times what’s dropped varies. Sometimes it’s a dish rag. Sometimes it’s a spoon. Sometimes it’s a knife. But there are a lot of different things. She had one for a knife and a spoon. She had a different saying for each one.
The fork to the floor, companies at the door was the one that…
Yeah, I love that it rhymes because a lot of times these old saying, the old superstitions or the old folklore, they don’t rhyme. So you can find that in Utah and North Carolina and the UK, throughout the European cultures and the Western cultures. We don’t know where that one came from, but it’s so pervasive.
I often wondered about that, of why we have this idea that if you drop something, somebody’s going to come. Is it that you’re about to be embarrassed and you need to wash the silverware more carefully? I don’t even really know. I feel like in these days that these sayings don’t get a lot of play. My impression is that they are relegated to the older generations and that they’re something of memory and not something with a lot of currency. But perhaps I’m wrong.
I don’t know if there’s a reference to, you know, is it an old English custom or whatever?
Yeah, they go back. I can find, if we look in the old folklore books, we can find these mentioned again and again, a hundred years ago, a little more than a hundred years ago. There’s folklore has been collected again and again throughout the English-speaking world. A lot of times there’s no dates, unfortunately, but I can find mentions of it in old newspapers from the 1930s. Definitely this is old.
Brian, thank you so much for calling and sharing these memories.
You’re welcome. I hope you keep the show up because it’s very interesting.
Thank you. Take care. Call us again sometime.
Our palms are itching.
Yeah. Okay, thank you.
Bye-bye.
Thanks. Bye-bye.
Bye.
Well, what’s the folklore that’s floating around in your family’s conversation?
We’d love to hear about it.
Give us a call at 877-929-9673 or send it to us in email. That address is words@waywordradio.org.
