Old Wives Tales!!

Auldloon

Taking a banana on a boat = poor fishing. Found that out by the guy rummaging in our bags and throwing offending banana overboard.

Nino Brown

You can catch a cold/flu by going out in the cold.

Shaving hair causes it to grow back thicker.

If you leave the immersion on you will bankrupt the family.

Drinking when you take antibiotics will make you get drunk quicker.

Shenshen

Neadine wrote: »

A friend of my parents recently told me it was "DANGEROUS" to go to bed/sleep with wet hair, the only danger I can see is the possibility of waking up with bad hair.
Any other strange things that you have been told?
Also, are theses things exclusively Irish?

The going to bed with wet hair isn't exculsively Irish, my gran used to say the same back in Germany.

I think I can guess where it would have come from, people used to not heat their bedrooms much, and in times gone by, a decent cold or flu was well enough to kill a person.

Shenshen

To add a bit of international insanity :

You can't do any laundry or change bed linen in the days between Christmas Eve and Epiphany (24th of December to the 6th of January for all you heathens out there), days known locally in Germany as "Raunaechte" or "rough nights", because the wild army is out and flying through the air, and someone in the family will die.

Also, you can't take unbaptised babies to the cemetery, as the devil will get them.

Nope, I didn't even need to make those up.

vitani

IrishExpat wrote: »

More of an old wives remedy:

I remember my grandmother would use a Bible to thump the wrist if anyone had a ganglion cyst. Absolute senseless, but that didn't stop her.

http://pages.uoregon.edu/esorens1/hphy362.pbwiki.com/f/ganglion%20cyst.jpg

Oh yeah, they're also known as 'Bible Cysts'.

I had one on my wrist for a while but left it to go away by itself after reading about the remedy.

Ilyana 2.0

An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after.

strobe

zenno wrote: »

If you pick up a Dandelion AKA (piss in the beds) you will piss in the bed that night

It just goes to show you the mental state of people back in the day, they were all insane and some still are coming up with idiotic sayings like these.

It's not that insane. Dandelion is a proven diuretic. Obviously just picking or smelling one wouldn't have any effect but it's easy to see how a child might have misunderstood the deal and the idea developed.

TerrorFirmer

I read one in a magazine recently that blew my mind - stretching before exercise is apparently of zero benefit according to a doctor! I couldn't believe it when I read it, but researched it more and...yup.

Stretching before exercise is a sacred ritual, but researchers have been finding that it actually slows you down. Florida State researchers recently showed that stretching before a run makes you about 5 percent less efficient, meaning you have to burn more energy to run at the same pace. This year, Italian researchers studying cyclists discovered why stretching is counterproductive. They found evidence that toe-touching stretches change the force-transmission properties of muscle fibers and alter the brain signals to muscle, reducing exercise efficiency by about 4 percent. Furthermore, there's insufficient scientific evidence that pre-exercise stretching reduces injury risk.

razorblunt

Can't put new shoes on the table, good job I put them on my feet so.

Awesomeness

IrishExpat wrote: »

More of an old wives remedy:

I remember my grandmother would use a Bible to thump the wrist if anyone had a ganglion cyst. Absolute senseless, but that didn't stop her.

http://pages.uoregon.edu/esorens1/hphy362.pbwiki.com/f/ganglion%20cyst.jpg

I had my doctor recommend this to me . Had one on my wrist and he said options were surgery or big book. Surgery would rule me out of a rugby match book would be fine so book it was.

Only problem is my brother was a crap aim and I ended up with a swollen hand too

Kolido

Candie wrote: »

I've heard that pregnant women shouldn't raise their arms above their heads, but I've never heard the 'logic' behind it.

Sweaty armpits I'd imagine

dodderangler wrote: »

When u sneeze you have to say god bless me to put bring the devil back in
Apparently the sneeze is devil escaping

Sitting too close to telly gives you square eyes

Surely if the devil was inside you it would be of benefit to let it out not keep it in.

yeppydeppy

Neadine wrote: »

Will now to eternity be scanning for discarded pennies!

I've a bunch of pennies in my pocket for you to find!;):D

shopaholic01

Awesomeness wrote: »

I had my doctor recommend this to me . Had one on my wrist and he said options were surgery or big book. Surgery would rule me out of a rugby match book would be fine so book it was.

Only problem is my brother was a crap aim and I ended up with a swollen hand too

Any heavy book would work for a ganglion cyst. Traditionally most people had a bible in their home, which was a heavy book and that's where it came form. I don't think it means that a 'holy book' is the only one that will work.

The one I always heard was that sitting on a cold wall gave you a kidney infection or haemorrhoids.

Ihatecuddles-old

shopaholic01 wrote: »

The one I always heard was that sitting on a cold wall gave you a kidney infection or haemorrhoids.

I heard that daily. Get off that wall you'll get piles!!

Going out without a coat will give you collywobbles on the gizzard. I don't even know what that means

Mariasofia

They are not exactly "old wives" but the nuns used to tell us not to wear black patent shoes cos the boys would see up our skirts!!

shopaholic01

Ihatecuddles wrote: »

I heard that daily. Get off that wall you'll get piles!!

Going out without a coat will give you collywobbles on the gizzard. I don't even know what that means

Sounds nasty whatever it is.

CdeC

A lot of these make sense but not in a superstitious way

Neadine wrote: »

A friend of my parents recently told me it was "DANGEROUS" to go to bed/sleep with wet hair, the only danger I can see is the possibility of waking up with bad hair.
Any other strange things that you have been told?
Also, are theses things exclusively Irish?

Wet hair causes body heat to be drawn away as water as a high specific heat capacity making your immune system less responsive and more suscepticle to viruses

xxxJennyxxx wrote: »

Bad luck to walk under a ladder. !

Someone may drop something on your head

Candie wrote: »

Breaking mirrors, putting brollys up inside the house,

Take someones eye out

Spunge wrote: »

eating before going to bed will make you fat
eating fat will make you fat

Your metabolism slows as you sleep therefore food not needed for energy and gets stored as fat for later

humbert wrote: »

Eating before you swim will give you cramps.

you get cramps from running after eating so why not swimming.

osarusan wrote: »

**** makkes youo bluinbd. waht s laod of crapp.

It does temporarily if you have bad aim (or good aim depending how you look at it)

dodderangler wrote: »

Sitting too close to telly gives you square eyes

This is true, focusing on something at the same distance as your eye is developing will make the muscles lazy and then will have difficulty working focusing on things far away therefore making you shortsighted.

WinnyThePoo

BillyMitchel wrote: »

Eating cheese before bed will give you nightmares! I used to ear blocks of it to prove the folks wrong and even then they'd insist it was true.

Eating cheese before you go to bed will give you pretty lucid dreams though or maybe thats just me.

ToddyDoody

Eating cheese before going to bed will give you nightmares... Never eat slimy cucumber... Chocolate gives you spots... Green poo is bad luck

tiger55

new shoes on the table:pac:

tiger55

ToddyDoody wrote: »

Eating cheese before going to bed will give you nightmares... Never eat slimy cucumber... Chocolate gives you spots... Green poo is bad luck

We used to have sweets called blue mouth when i was a kid and that would give you green poo lol

fergal.b

When I was young I remember a little old lady giving me 5p to buy some warts off me that I had on my thumb, a few weeks later the warts were gone and never came back. Best deal I ever made




.

ToddyDoody

tiger55 wrote: »

We used to have sweets called blue mouth when i was a kid and that would give you green poo lol

We got a football shaped cake that gave us (and anyone else that had it) a nice little suprise... GREEN POO! (and it wasn't even Paddy's Day)

shopaholic01

fergal.b wrote: »

When I was young I remember a little old lady giving me 5p to buy some warts off me that I had on my thumb, a few weeks later the warts were gone and never came back. Best deal I ever made




.

The one I've always heard was where you put coins in a bag, one for each wart, and whoever opens the bag gets your warts.

Another one about rubbing them with a potato and then burying it - can't remember the full details.

fishy fishy

the Old Wives Tales usually have a grain of truth in them, i.e.

an old wives tale is usually a natural remedy for some ailment, i.e. putting a dock leave on a nettle sting, putting a slug over a wart, putting the first spit of the morning on hives or itchy spots, eat an apple a day to keep the doctor away.

however, most of the things posted are simple superstitions - the old remedies for health issues, although we think are crazy, do actually have truth in them.

Pumpkinseeds

fergal.b wrote: »

When I was young I remember a little old lady giving me 5p to buy some warts off me that I had on my thumb, a few weeks later the warts were gone and never came back. Best deal I ever made




.

Hee I was just thinking about when I bought my little brothers wart from him when we were kids. He was totally paranoid about it. I can't remember what I paid him for it, wouldn't have been more than a few pence. The wart disappeared within a few weeks. Freaky.

Pumpkinseeds

IrishExpat wrote: »

I know full well, logically that the number of magpies means nothing, zilch ...

but if I'm alone and I see a single magpie, I'll still say 'hello Mr. Magpie'.

Someone else please admit to it.

I usually say 'Good morning Mr Magpie':o

conorhal

Ilyana 2.0 wrote: »

An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after.

It's partially true, our circadian rhythms are photosensitive and those that go to bed late can have their sleep disrupted by trying to sleep when it gets bright.

The cheese and nightmares thing also has some basis in fact, when you sleep your digestive system sort of shuts down, so eating late, especially more difficult to digest foodstuffs like cheese may interrupt your sleep patterns making it more likely that you will wake up mid REM sleep and this more likely to remember your dreams, which, sadly, are typically 60% nightmare....

Beneath many an old wives tale is a hint of truth. Which is why I want all magpies to be glued together in pairs, BY LAW!

hairyprincess

The one about pregnant women not putting their arms in the air is because the baby could get strangled with the umbilical cord.

Pregnant women shouldn't have their photo taken.

When someone sneezes you say "bless you" to prevent their soul from falling out.

A bird flying into the house means a death in the family.

A black cat crossing your path is good luck, in America, it's a white cat

Seven years bad luck if you break a mirror - my mother still hasn't forgiven me for a death in the family that occurred after I broke a mirror. I was three years old.

When you see a magpie, you should tip your hat and say "good morning/afternoon colonel" - the fact that you may not be wearing a hat is irrelevant.

"See a penny pick it up, all day long you'll have good luck. See a penny let it lie..........." - I don't remember the rest!

Jev/N

zenno wrote: »

If you pick up a Dandelion AKA (piss in the beds) you will piss in the bed that night

It just goes to show you the mental state of people back in the day, they were all insane and some still are coming up with idiotic sayings like these.

Pretty good entertainment if you started it