“Rabbit, Rabbit” is what a good many of my fellow West Babylon High School (WBHS) alumni will be saying first thing on January first. That is, if they remember to say it. Legend has it that if you forget, you can also say “Tibbar, Tibbar” before you fall asleep on the evening of the first day of the month.
How did a few generations of WBHS alumni come up with this first of the month ritual? It’s attributed to a former English teacher, Laura Strang Langford. And although I do not recall having Mrs. Langford as an English teacher, I remember the “Rabbit, Rabbit” story.
One WBHS alumna from the 1960s said, “There is barely a month that goes by that I don’t say ‘Rabbit, Rabbit’ out loud when I first wake up on the first day of the month. Throughout my life I have been a bit superstitious, especially when it comes to invoking luck. I can only imagine that Mrs. Langford told a good story, with a twinkle in her eye, when she told us about ‘Rabbit, Rabbit.’ I was fortunate to be in her senior creative writing class and it began with English literature. In fact, she began with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which she helped translate from Old English, a subject dear to her heart. She could read and speak Old English. The origins of ‘Rabbit, Rabbit,’ which is still popular in England today, with variations in how it’s said, seem to have a long history in folklore.”
These variations include a “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit” version. Some sources state that it began in England and is still popular in New England. For some reason, perhaps my inane ability to remember totally useless information, I recalled that Mrs. Langford was a Smith College alumna. Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, was a long way from Laura Pratt Sprang’s Denver, Colorado, home. If my research is correct, her grandmother, also named Laura Pratt Sprang, was a high school English teacher in Denver.
Mrs. Langford, the West Babylon High School English teacher, graduated from Smith in 1935. Her obituary in the April 1977 Smith Alumnae Quarterly told of her death on February 20, 1977 in Key West Florida. These additional details were given, “She completed graduate studies at Katharine Gibbs, Boston, Radcliffe, Hofstra University and NYU. Most of her professional life was devoted to teaching English. For more than 20 years she was on the faculty of West Babylon Senior H.S. in Long Island, where she was a pioneer in introducing the humanities into the secondary school curriculum. She is survived by her husband (Stephen), 1 son, Charles, and 2 brothers.”
I suspect Mrs. Langford would be quite pleased to know that there are still some WBHS alumni who remember her and her “Rabbit, Rabbit” story. And a good many of them will start 2014 by repeating those words.
© Fran Becque, www.fraternityhistory.com, 2013. All Rights Reserved.
