WISHBONES - HISTORY AND LORE

Our family collection of wishbones, mostly chicken and the occasional turkey one, hung in our kitchen. Turkey was a special-occasion bird, making its big, impressive wishbone rare and highly prized. Expertly removed from the bird when it was carved, the wishbones were cleaned, then suspended over the sink on the handle of a manual can opener. From this central spot, we would watch them dry while we washed and dried the dishes. The drying took forever, or so it seemed, but if not sufficiently dry, the wishbones would bend, not snapping cleanly. Once my mother deemed them ready, two in the family were chosen to try their luck. Little fingers curled tightly around the slender white brittle bones that formed the fork, we paused for a moment, eyes closed, to consider then silently utter our wishes,… 1,… 2,… 3,… snap. In most families, so I later learned, it ends there—if you had the longer piece, your wish came true. In our family, life was not so simple.
The winner held both pieces of the broken bone in his or her hand, with just the tips of the unbroken ends jutting out. The loser attempted to redeem his luck by choosing the longer bone. Naturally, careful observation of the tips of the bone before the initial snap paid off. The furcula, or wishbone, is found in all birds and is the forked bone between the bird’s neck and breast. Its older name, merrythought, dates from 1607. That name also referred to the custom of two people pulling on the bone until it broke. The person left with the longer piece would soon be married, a merrythought. I mistakenly assumed everyone grew up with the tradition of carefully drying the wishbone. This custom, however, appears to be peculiarly Anglo-Saxon, with uncertain origins and many bizarre and contradictory explanations put forward. This is often a sign that the tradition derives from an ancient belief and in this case, the ritual of breaking wishbones may be linked to the prophetic power of the goose.
Many religions and sacred ceremonies from Scandinavia and Europe to India and China depict the goose, often in the company of gods. Why the goose? Geese are migratory birds and early peoples observed that their reappearance each year signaled the return of the sun and the arrival of spring, and with it, fertility and prosperity. So, the goose was thought to have prophetic powers and these resided in its bones. Before flying south for the winter, the geese grazed on the harvested fields to fatten up for the long flight. The fattened geese made excellent eating, and afterward, their bones, in particular the breastbone, were examined to predict the severity of the approaching winter. Goose feasts became an important pagan tradition. Like many pagan rituals, they were expropriated by Christianity and transformed into feasts for saints. In Britain, the goose feast was linked to the archangel Saint Michael, whose feast day is September 29, known as Michaelmas.

In Europe, Saint Martin’s day, or Martinmas, November 11, was the day to eat goose. Both occasions celebrated the magical prophetic powers of the goose. In 1455, a German physician, Dr. Hartleib, described how the goose’s breastbone was dried overnight, then examined to predict the coming winter. The goose, like the groundhog, was an early weather forecaster, but unfortunately for the goose, it meant death. The doctor also noted that the Teutonic knights used a goose’s wishbone to determine the most advantageous time to wage war. In parts of Scotland, predicting with a wishbone was not so simple. First, a hole was drilled in the flat top of the bone, then it was balanced on the bridge of the nose, like spectacles. The wearers of the bone had to pass a piece of thread through the hole, and the number of times it took them to succeed at this task would be the number of years before they married. Once Europeans discovered the turkey, in Mexico, the goose was replaced on festive tables by this exotic new bird.
Within a hundred years of Dr. Hartleib’s writings, turkey was common throughout Europe. Although goose remained popular in Scandinavia, Germany, and Eastern Europe, the belief in its prophetic power disappeared. Only in Britain was the oracular power of the goose maintained, if unconsciously, by playing a wishing game with the wishbone. The game was exported by the British to America, South Africa, and Australia. In all these places, the wishbone, especially from the Christmas bird, is dried, then snapped apart by two people pulling on either end. The tradition of linking little fingers to form a makeshift wishbone and wishing grew out of the same custom.

THE BIGGEST WISHBONE 

The biggest wishbone of all is in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History, and belongs to Tyrannosaurus Sue. Sue’s is one of the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeletons discovered. She’s big at 42 feet (12.6 m) long and old, some sixty-seven million years old. But it’s not her size or age that impresses, it’s the fact that Sue has a furcula. She is the first T. rex ever found with a wishbone. This gives credence to the theory that birds evolved either directly from dinosaurs or from a common ancestor. (By the way, no one really knows if Sue is female; she is named after Sue Hendrickson, who found her.)

OTHER WISHBONES

Wishbone and merrythought have other meanings as well. Merrythought is the name of a wishbone-shaped bookbinding tool used in the late fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. During the 1970s a popular North American football formation was called the wishbone. In this play, the two fullbacks and the quarterback form a wishbone shape to pass the ball around the opposing defensive line.

PERSIAN WISHBONES

In Iran, there is game played with wishbones that has elements of the British tradition. A bet, usually involving a service or money, is made before the wishbone is broken. The winner, in order to receive the service or sum demanded, is required to say,” Yadam” (I remember, in Persian) each time the loser hands him anything at all. If he forgets, the game is over. A winner with a good memory can keep the game going for days or weeks. A crafty loser, on the other hand, will try every trick he can think of to end the game. For example, he may pretend to drop something, hoping that the winner will instinctively grab it and forget to say yadam.

Excerpts from the book "Bones Recipes, History, and Lore" by Jennifer McLagan, Harper-Collins,2005. Compiled, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.