![]() Keeping seashells in front of the door will bring luck into the house. If a large seashell roars, it means the sea is rough. If shellfish have a lot of sand in their shells, it means a storm is coming (Daniels 2003 II: 691). Opening shell oysters meant you’d hear about a death (Daniels 2003 I: 448). To do otherwise meant you had financial problems. You should only eat oysters when there was an ‘R’ in the month. If you were opening oysters and found some of them wouldn’t open, it meant money was coming your way, but you wouldn’t inherit it. Opening shell clams meant you’d have conflict in the family. Who wouldn’t love this yellow shell? © Icy Sedgwick The folklore of shells wouldn’t be complete without superstitions!ĭrinking out of a shell meant you’d soon fall in love (Daniels 2003 I: 414). Mary Anning’s contribution to science is worth a lot more than a tongue twister that isn’t even about her. The longer version, including ‘by the seashore’, dates to 1898 (Winick 2017). By 1871, it was described as a tongue twister. Winick found the phrase ‘she sells sea shells’ in an 1855 elocution manual. It was already a folk saying by 1908, and he simply turned it into a song. That said, to make the claim without the primary evidence makes you wonder where the idea came from.Īnd, to add insult to injury, Terry Sullivan didn’t invent the tongue twister in 1908. That’s obviously not to say that no primary evidence exists. Stephen Winick notes that no primary evidence supports the claim (2017). Many of the articles say things like “it’s believed that” or “many say that” when making the link to Anning. ![]() Is it true?īut there’s no evidence that Sullivan wrote the lyrics about Anning’s life. Various sources, including QI and Mental Floss, claimed the tongue twister was originally a song, written in 1908 by Terry Sullivan and Harry Gifford. As Stephen Winick points out, we should be suspicious when no one provides any evidence to support their claim. Donne from 1847, based on the 1842 portrait, showing her pointing at an ammonite, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsĪnd many websites have also made the claim that Anning’s work inspired the tongue twister. Because of her working-class background and status as a woman, many of her achievements were claimed by male scientists (Winick 2017).īut she actually helped to discover categories of dinosaurs, including the pterosaur and plesiosaur (Winick 2017). For those not in the know, Anning was an English 19th-century palaeontologist. In this one, people repeat the claim that the myth is really about Mary Anning. The ‘She sells sea shells’ rhyme is likewise saddled with an origin myth. Look at the persistent claim that ‘Ring around the Rosie’ is about the plague (spoiler: it’s not). Nursery rhymes seem rife with peculiar origins stories. Is ‘She sells sea shells’ really about Mary Anning? It’s not, strictly speaking, her birth since she came from the sea fully grown. Botticelli’s famous painting ‘The Birth of Venus’ sees her born from the sea standing in an open shell. Scallop shells are also associated with the goddess Venus. His body washed up on the beach, apparently unmarked and covered in scallop shells (Wanda n.d.). In another legend, a storm sank the ship carrying St James’ remains. ![]() People started hanging scallops above their beds or near where animals drank (Wanda n.d.). This was one of the 23 miracles St James performed. By Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia CommonsĪnother legend has St James curing a knight’s throat disease by laying a scallop on his neck. The French Way of Saint James in Amarelle, Sabugueira, Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña province, Galicia, Spain. ![]()
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