Who swears on their mother's womb?

December 26, 2020 1:48 PM

Several months ago a person swore something to me "on [their] mother's womb". It surprised me at the time because I know that phrase from a very specific and unusual context [i.e., an oath used in a Wiccan initiation ritual]. Is this phrase commonly used in another (sub-)cultural context?

The person in question was Canadian, Catholic, mid-50s, of Polish ancestry. The context was fairly serious workplace misconduct, and the thing being sworn to later turned out to have been a lie.

I've Googled the phrase and it showed up no more than a couple of times in internet forum comments or fanfiction, but I couldn't immediately tell whether it was being used sarcastically in those contexts.

I am Wiccan and openly wear a (small, discrete) pentacle but had never spoken about it among that network of people, so the person could in principle have found out (if they had already known the symbolism, which is kind of unlikely) and tried to use it against me, but that seems kind of far-fetched and paranoid to me.

posted by heatherlogan to Society & Culture (8 answers total)

Data point: in Chilean Spanish, 'ándate a la concha de tu madre' (go [back] to your mother's womb') or just 'concha de tu madre' is a strong insult.
posted by signal at 2:23 PM on December 26, 2020

Best answer: 1) are you 100% sure it wasn't "swear on my mother's tomb"? (as a variation of "swear on my mother's grave" which I think is wide spread.)

2) I feel like I have heard/read this before (albeit rarely) but not connected with any particular ethnicity or culture, definitely not as some kind of dig on Wiccans.

3) Maaaaybe the Catholicism is relevant here?

4) Honestly my gut feeling is that most people are barely aware that modern Wiccans exist, and assume that those that do are, like, living in yurts in the woods outside Seattle in some kinda hippie commune. Yeah, I think it's highly doubtful that they are somehow referring to your beliefs.
posted by soundguy99 at 2:29 PM on December 26, 2020 [3 favorites]

Best answer: The person was possibly superstitious enough not to want to swear on their mother's grave when they knew they were lying.
posted by betweenthebars at 2:51 PM on December 26, 2020

Response by poster: If it's relevant, their mother was still alive.
posted by heatherlogan at 3:25 PM on December 26, 2020

Ah, the old "but my mother had a hysterectomy years ago" loophole.
posted by bricoleur at 4:14 PM on December 26, 2020 [15 favorites]

I'm in some pagan communities and that phrase hasn't come up with any regularity that I know of here. It doesn't sound unnatrual to me in a pagan context but even with some pretty in depth knowledge it's not something I'd think of saying to upset somebody. I haven't heard this phrase before that I've noticed.

I'd just chalk it up to English is a wierd language and it sounded serious enough for them to try and pass of their lie as truth.
posted by AlexiaSky at 2:30 AM on December 27, 2020

Best answer: Not a Catholic phrase. Not a Polish phrase. Not a mid-50s phrase. Not sure if it is a Canadian phrase, but seems quite unlikely. Seems the liar heard it somewhere and used it to avoid the "I swear to God I'm telling the truth" phrase which some find unusable when lying about something serious.
posted by KayQuestions at 2:55 AM on December 27, 2020

Best answer: Huh, I've heard this both as an intentional joke and what sounded like an accidental mixing of metaphors. "On my mother's tomb" is a dated but not super-uncommon expression (google ngrams result), and I've also run into "on my mother's life" if said relative was . . . alive; this could be an intentional variant. There's a lot in the early bits of the Christian bible about the mother's womb, so among the various things people swear oaths on, maybe it's just a matter of a little muddling.

I have known a couple of Wiccans and would never have made an association.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:58 AM on December 27, 2020