RARA-AVIS: En Cuba

E J M Duggan (eddie.duggan@suffolk.ac.uk)
Fri, 05 Dec 1997 20:24:57 -0800 On Thu, 4 Dec 1997 "Ann Hilgeman" <eahilg@seark.net> wrote:

>>Why Brigid was whistling "En Cuba"

>The author was probably doing a little foreshadowing here. In the words of
>my sainted grandmother, repeated every time I tried to whistle, "Whistling
>girls and cackling hens/Always come to some bad end."

Over here, that's cast:

A whistling woman, a crowing hen
Is good for neither [gods?] nor men

[Don't recall if it's God or gods]

Readers of Thomas Hardy's _Tess of the d'Urbervilles_ will recall that
both whistling women and crowing hen are motifs presaging ill fortune
(Hardy's novels are a vast repository of folklore]. Hammett may well
have had something similar in mind. However, as one of the
characteristics of pulp writing is its 'nowness' (set in the immediate
present), it may simply be the case that the tune is included as a way
of 'fixing' the narrative in the present of 1929.

(I must admit, however, that I don't know the tune or its chronology,
but I vaguely recall reading somewhere that it was 'topical' or
'popular' at the time.)

ED

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