![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
venta[Poll #1598358]
Please vote before reading on!
According to me, such shivers are caused by a goose walking over your grave. ChrisC insists that this is nonsense, and thatthe mother ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
exspelunca probably made it up (this is his reaction to approximately 85% of the things I say).
The other day Claudia - who is distressingly Continental, speaking around ten languages competently, and conversing fluently in English, her third language - shivered and blamed it on a goose walking over her grave. See! Colloquial English, as taught in the best Continental schools, was there to back me up! I began planning my victory dance. Depressingly, under questioning, Claudia cracked and admitted she'd got the phrase from me and was thus inadmissible as evidence.
At dance practice last night, I posed the question in the above poll. The crossing of graves was generally mentioned, but with the exception of one other person there was a lot of "A goose? A goose? Don't you mean ghost?"
Except for our youngest new recruit, who looked puzzled and said she wasn't dead yet, thus didn't have a grave. I've always presumed it actually refers to a goose crossing the future site of my burial (as yet unknown to me - or indeed to anyone except, apparently, goosekind).
Incidentally, if anyone has any non-grave-related explanations or, even better, any explanations from non-English-speaking countries I'd love to hear them. Despite her extensive education, Claudia was unable to produce any other countries' explanations. "I don't know. I guess you'd just say you shivered."
I ask you. Don't these Continentals have any imagination?
Please vote before reading on!
According to me, such shivers are caused by a goose walking over your grave. ChrisC insists that this is nonsense, and that
exspelunca probably made it up (this is his reaction to approximately 85% of the things I say).The other day Claudia - who is distressingly Continental, speaking around ten languages competently, and conversing fluently in English, her third language - shivered and blamed it on a goose walking over her grave. See! Colloquial English, as taught in the best Continental schools, was there to back me up! I began planning my victory dance. Depressingly, under questioning, Claudia cracked and admitted she'd got the phrase from me and was thus inadmissible as evidence.
At dance practice last night, I posed the question in the above poll. The crossing of graves was generally mentioned, but with the exception of one other person there was a lot of "A goose? A goose? Don't you mean ghost?"
Except for our youngest new recruit, who looked puzzled and said she wasn't dead yet, thus didn't have a grave. I've always presumed it actually refers to a goose crossing the future site of my burial (as yet unknown to me - or indeed to anyone except, apparently, goosekind).
Incidentally, if anyone has any non-grave-related explanations or, even better, any explanations from non-English-speaking countries I'd love to hear them. Despite her extensive education, Claudia was unable to produce any other countries' explanations. "I don't know. I guess you'd just say you shivered."
I ask you. Don't these Continentals have any imagination?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-07-28 04:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-28 04:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-07-28 04:38 pm (UTC)Geese might walk over graves and cause shivers - I have no direct evidence to the contrary. Besides, if you weren't willing to admit that sort of causal relationship, you'd probably say "I shivered"!
But rabbits don't walk. Demonstrably. I demand my old wives tales be more carefully observed!
:)