Texas
United States
Retired
I've lived in eight different states, mostly in the south
"If you want a thing done well, get a couple of old broads to do it".... Bette Davis
ON PINS AND NEEDLESA whistling Woman and a Crowing Hen
I love to whistle when I’m happy and busy. One morning, I was whistling softly as I went about my work. A co-worker laughed and said "Two things in this world come to no good end." I laughed with her and replied "A whistling woman and a crowing hen". Neither of us could believe the other had heard that proverb.
I had heard it since childhood, but never repeated it because I thought no one else would know what I was talking about. My co-worker and I grew up in different parts of the country and in different cultures, but somehow we had a common thread in our background. I decided to find out exactly where that phrase came from.
My introduction to it came from my grandfather. Occasionally, a hen on the farm in Arkansas would attempt to crow. The superstition was that bad luck would come to the house where a hen crowed, so that hen became Sunday dinner. My grandmother was a happy woman who usually sang or hummed as she went about her chores, but she would no more whistle than she would be caught out without her cotton stockings.
There are several variations on the proverb, which appears to be of Scotch or Irish origin around the mid eighteenth century. Scotch-Irish immigrants brought their culture and their superstitions with them when they migrated to America. Almost three hundred years later, my friend and I repeat it with a joy of recognition as we work in a modern, high tech setting.
I can’t imagine exactly why a whistling woman was historically considered such an abomination, nor why that would be coupled with a crowing hen. Perhaps both reflect an "uppity" nature that offends those who are only comfortable with the strict delineation of gender roles.
Maybe that discomfort explains one of the reasons Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid was doomed. Three hundred years and a lot of diversity and change and high tech innovations may have occurred, but we are still uncomfortable with those who stray outside the narrow parameters our culture has defined for them.
I enjoyed your web site very much. The recipes and the cultural practices described on your links are very familiar to me, even though I grew up in an area far away from Appalachia.
In my genealogy research, I noticed that migration paths during the mid nineteenth century involved the movement of groups of people from the Appalachian area to Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas. I find the responses to the proverb very interesting. The areas where people have heard the phrase seem to reflect those migration paths.
Growing up in Greensboro, NC, I heard this saying occasionally from my grandmother, but had forgotten it until I came to eastern Kentucky in 1975 when this saying began to show up in my Appalachian dialect unit as I asked my composition students to share common sayings with me in the college classroom. When it came time for me to do my dissertation at age of 53, I interviewed nontraditional female students who had been in my comp cl****in the early 1990s. For my title, I went back to this saying, but turned it around. These women had come to "good ends," to voice because of their education, so I titled the work, Whistlin' and Crowin' Women of Appalachia: Literacy Practices since College. Now a book, readers can learn more about these wonderful women by going to www.kathysohn.com. Thanks Kathy
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I grew up in central Virginia in a closely knit African American community and that proverb was paramount in our neighborhood. Your post brought back many memories from my childhood and specifically the teens. Your analysis regarding this proverb (in my opinion) is on point.
Regards,
AARP Rebecca
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