by Chloe Rhodes
IT IS GOOD LUCK IF A BABY CRIES AT ITS CHRISTENING
According to the earliest version of this superstition, which appears in print from the late 1700s, it is not only good luck for a baby to cry at its christening, but utterly essential. If it remained silent it was an omen that it would not live for long, and with infant mortality rates at around four hundred deaths per thousand births in the early eighteenth century, any hint that a child might not survive was taken seriously. Crying as the holy water was sprinkled was seen as so important that it was quite common for a nurse or mother to pinch a baby, or at least rouse it from sleep, to make sure that it made the right noises at the crucial moment.
There are two contradictory explanations for this belief; the first, common by the mid-nineteenth century, was that it was a sign that the child was too good for an earthly life and that it belonged instead with God in heaven, where, presumably, nobody cries. The second, more sinister and seemingly more widely held, was that crying was a sign that the Devil had been ousted. An entry in an 1853 edition of Notes and Queries explains the theory:
I am inclined to suspect that the idea of its being lucky for a child to cry at baptism arose from the custom of exorcism, which was retained in the Anglican Church in the First Prayer Book of King Edward VI, and is still commonly observed in the baptismal services of the Church of Rome. When the devil was going out of the possessed person, he was supposed to do so with reluctance: ‘The spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him: and he was as one dead’ (St Mark ix 26). The tears and struggles of the infant would therefore be a convincing proof that the evil one had departed.
KEEPING CATS AWAY FROM BABIES TO PREVENT THEM FROM SUCKING THE BREATH FROM A CHILD
When this superstition was first in circulation in the sixteenth century, it was thought that grown men as well as babies could be the victim of a cat’s appetite for carbon dioxide. The English author William Baldwin makes reference to the notion in his satire Beware the Cat in 1561: ‘That cat . . . got to his mouth and drew so his breath that she almost stifled him.’
Cats were believed to be the familiars of witches (see Black Cats), whose influence was so greatly feared in this period that any unexplained illness or ailment was put down to their evil work. Witches were also said to be able to take the form of nocturnal animals and often appeared as cats so that they could slip into people’s homes without being noticed.
The precise origin of the idea that cats suck the breath of humans is difficult to pinpoint, but there was a perception that because of their links to witchcraft, cats preferred stale air that had been through someone’s lungs to fresh air. Another possibility is that it was a misinterpretation of the cat’s own behaviour that earned it its sinister reputation for breath sucking. Eyewitness accounts of this happening, which at the time were taken as proof of the cat’s evil intent, describe cats sitting on people’s chests as they sleep. This suggests that the cat’s natural desire for warmth and companionship, often to be found by sitting on a warm body, might have been behind the belief. This may then have been cemented by reports of unfortunate cases where a cat might have smothered a child by curling up with it in such a way that it blocked its airways as it slept.
Either way, the belief had a strong enough hold that it lasted well into the twentieth century and is still half-believed by the most superstitious among us today, at least enough to make us shut the door of a baby’s room if the cat is about, just to be on the safe side.
NEVER SPEAK ILL OF THE DEAD
This superstition has its origins in the wisdom of the ancient Greeks. The phrase first appears in print in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by the third-century Greek biographer Diogenes Laërtius, who attributes it to Chilon of Sparta, one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Diogenes’s work was translated into Latin in 1432 by the Italian theologian Ambrogio Traversari, whose version made the phrase well known in Latin as De mortuis nihil nisi bonum (‘Of the dead, nothing unless good.’)
English translations of Latin aphorisms were popular in the Middle Ages, when they gave a comfortingly ancient sense of order to an otherwise chaotic world. They fitted easily within the already well-established set of rules and rituals, which, coupled with the dictates of the Church, provided a moral framework for medieval life. This one, in particular, chimed with popular views about the importance of respecting the dead, whose souls were believed to stay in close contact with those they had left behind.
Before funeral homes housed ‘the remains’ of the dead, corpses were kept at home until they were buried, and the soul of the person was thought to hover around until that time. Even after a funeral the soul of the deceased was felt to be accessible simply by visiting the graveside. Benches were often placed among the graves so that people could sit and talk to the dead as if they were still readily able to hear them. This meant that they also believed that if someone said anything disrespectful, it would be heard by that person’s spirit, which would then haunt whoever had bad-mouthed them.
These days we stick to the tradition of respecting the dead, more out of a desire to protect their memory than because we think they can hear us, although we are just as likely to say, ‘I know we shouldn’t speak ill of the dead but . . .’ as a precursor to a bit of posthumous disparagement.
CARRYING A RABBIT’S FOOT TO WARD OFF EVIL
Rabbits’ feet are well known as good-luck charms and were carried on the person or placed beside babies’ cradles to ward off evil spirits, but belief in a ‘lucky rabbit’s foot’ dates only from twentieth-century America and is in fact a blend of two much older superstitions. The idea of carrying a foot as a charm came from the belief that the foot of a rabbit or hare worked as a cure for rheumatism and digestive problems like colic and gout. This idea had its roots in medieval medicine, when the only remedies available came from plants and animals, but prevailed well into the superstition-laden sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
The English diarist Samuel Pepys carried a hare’s foot as a cure for his recurrent abdominal pains, as the following illuminating entry from 20 January describes:
So homeward, in my way buying a hare and taking it home – which arose upon my discourse today with Mr Batten in Westminster-hall – who showed me my mistake, that my hares-foot hath not the joint to it, and assures me he never had his colique since he carried it about him. And it is a strange thing how fancy works, for I no sooner almost handled his foot but my belly begin to loose and to break wind; and whereas I was in some pain yesterday and t’other day, and in fear of more today, I became very well, and so continue.
The notion that such a charm could also ward off evil comes from the separate medieval belief that rabbits, whose young are born with their eyes open, had the power of second sight, so could warn people if evil spirits approached. Their renowned reproductive success also made them a symbol of fertility, which was always seen as a blessing. Saying ‘white rabbits’ three times on the first morning of the month was also said to bring good luck.
THE FIRST PERSON YOU SEE ON NEW YEAR’S DAY MUST BE A DARK-HAIRED MAN
Many of the rituals enacted at the start of the New Year have their roots in the Druid midwinter festival celebrations, which traditionally took place towards the end of December to mark the end of the dark days and the return of the sun. Today’s fireworks and party poppers replace the singing and bell ringing used in centuries gone by to clear the air of evil spirits ready for the entrance of the New Year. The custom of drinking heavily stems from the Anglo-Saxon custom of wassailing, the passing on of good cheer and blessings by drinking from a shared bowl of ale.
The idea that the first person over the threshold on New Year’s Day had to be male is first noted in 1805, and by 1845 the records include the fact that he must also be of a dark complexion. It was seen as unlucky if he was fair and a sign of impending doom if he should be a redhead (see Never Choose a Redhead as a Bridesmaid . . .). And while this is fairly recent compared with other New Year rituals, it seems
to originate from a much older belief that your fortune could be affected for good or ill by the kind of person you met on the morning of any important day, such as that of a christening, wedding or the start of a long journey. The superstition appeared in this form as early as 1303 in the Middle English manuscript Handlyng Synne by the Gilbertine monk Robert Manning, also known as Robert de Brunne. His book was a rhyming confessional manual adapted from the Maneul des Péchés (‘Handbook of Sins’) usually ascribed to the Anglo-Norman author William of Waddington between 1250 and 1270, and which provides a rare insight into the mindset of the minor clergy and peasantry of the early fourteenth century.
Once it was established, the idea that a dark-haired man should be the first person you meet became so firmly entrenched that in Scotland it was common for suitable men to be hired by local households to pay a visit just after midnight to ensure good luck for the coming year.
NEW CLOTHES SHOULD NOT BE WORN TO A FUNERAL
As with many of the superstitions surrounding death, this one has its roots in a combination of Christian correctness and pagan ritual. In the pre-Christian era funerals were seen as beacons for evil spirits drawn by the possibility that they might be able to take possession of the corpse, so every effort was made to appease them. One method for this was to dress in old clothes that wouldn’t incite their envy.
African-American tradition in the Deep South of the US said that funeral clothes or the fabric used to make them should be borrowed rather than new, because wearing new clothes would make the avenging spirit that had caused the death jealous and more likely to bring about the death of another member of the family.
There was also the possibility that the spirit of the person being buried might be envious, having so recently had their life and their ability to enjoy worldly possessions taken from them. This might cause their spirit to haunt anyone wearing new clothes (or shoes, since they would never walk the earth again.) The risk of being haunted by the ghost of the recently deceased was also the reason why black was chosen as the colour of mourning; it was believed that black clothes could confuse the ghost into seeing the wearer as a shadow, rather than a living person who could be haunted or whose body was ripe for possession.
Christianity, meanwhile, taught that for the faithful, death marked the beginning of a new eternal life, and the dressing of corpses in new clothes for burial seems also to have influenced the development of this superstition. As the seventeenth-century English scholar Joseph Bingham explains: ‘We clothe the dead in new garments, to signify or represent beforehand their putting on the new Clothing of Incorruption.’ So everyone attending the funeral, still mired in the sins of the earthly world, had to wear old clothes to differentiate themselves from the heaven-ready person in the coffin.
There were a number of popular variations on the theme; some claimed new clothes would wear out quickly if worn to a funeral, while others said the person wearing them would be dead by the time they wore out. These days the custom of wearing black as a mark of respect is still firmly adhered to at traditional church funerals.
A SAILOR WEARING AN EARRING CANNOT DROWN
Ear piercing is thought to be one of the oldest forms of human adornment; the oldest mummified human to be discovered by archaeologists, estimated at more than five thousand years old, has both ears pierced, and earrings are mentioned in the Old Testament and in Greek mythology. Some sources suggest that the reason sailors wear earrings is linked to ancient Greek stories about Charon, the ferryman who carried the souls of the dead across the river Styx to Hades and who had to be paid for his trouble in gold. Usually gold coins were placed in the mouths of dead bodies at burial but sailors, at risk of dying at sea and fearful of arriving without the means to pay for their passage, pierced their ears with gold rings that they could use instead.
Parallel stories exist in Christian folklore, according to which sailors wore gold earrings in the hope that they would be used to pay for a Christian burial if their bodies washed up on a foreign shore. Some sailors believed piercing their ears gave them better eyesight, while others used earrings as symbols of their experience at sea; they were said to add a gold piercing every time they traversed the globe or crossed the equator, and a black pearl earring was said to show that they had survived a shipwreck.
Because they faced almost constant peril at sea, sailors have traditionally been among the most superstitious of groups and almost every aspect of their lives, from the people on board ship to the clothes and jewellery they wore, were laced with ritual. In the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance there were no nautical maps to help them navigate or weather forecasts to warn them of storms. Many sailors in this period were at sea for war, risking their lives in battle, and those who sailed for trade were at almost as great a risk from piracy. Any protection they could find in the form of amulets or talismans against misfortune were made the most of, and the gold earring eventually came to be seen as a kind of charm against drowning. Since ear piercing was almost universal among sailors, there must have been many who proved its failings as a means of protection, but the wrath of the sea was well enough respected that few would dare to test it and the tradition continues to this day.
TO HAVE WOMEN ON BOARD SHIP MAKES THE SEA ANGRY
As this collection demonstrates, superstitions abound in every field of life, but they are present in the greatest numbers and adhered to with the most vehemence by people who feel themselves to be at the mercy of chance. Seafaring people – especially those who took to the waves in the days when most of the oceans of the world were unmapped and weather forecasting was limited to the appearance of clouds – ran a higher risk than most that life might suddenly be snatched from them, which helps explain why even those superstitions of which the origins are unclear exerted such a powerful hold.
The idea that it was unlucky to have women on board ship is thought to date back to the earliest days of seafaring and continued to be acted upon until well into the twentieth century. When Captain Collingwood, an Admiral of the Royal Navy who partnered Nelson in the Napoleonic wars, discovered in 1808 that there was a woman on board a ship in his squadron, he wrote in a letter to his colleague Admiral Purvis: ‘I never knew a woman brought to sea in a ship that some mischief did not befall the vessel,’ and ordered that she be sent home at the first available opportunity.
There is, however, little evidence that this drastic step was often taken. In the Age of Sail, which spanned from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, women did board ships in great numbers, and not just as passengers. Some were officially welcomed on board as the wives or mistresses of captains. Some, including many prostitutes, were smuggled aboard by officers or seaman and a few boarded ships disguised as men so they could work alongside the sailors undetected. This may have been allowed because even the most superstitious of sailors would have also been familiar with the belief that a naked woman could save lives at sea by calming the waves. This idea appears in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History:
Hailstorms, they say, whirlwinds, and lightning even, will be scared away by a woman uncovering her body while her monthly courses are upon her. The same, too, with all kinds of tempestuous weather; and out at sea, a storm may be lulled by a woman uncovering her body merely, even though not menstruating at the time.
CUTTING YOUR HAIR OR NAILS AT SEA IS BAD LUCK
In the Middle Ages cuttings of hair and nails were thought to embody the essence of a person even after they were separated from the body because they appeared to grow in a way that seemed to suggest they had a life of their own. This made them useful to witches, who were thought to be able to inflict pain on an individual simply by cursing a sample of their hair or using their nail clippings in a spell, but it also made them valuable as an offering in times of dire need. Sacrificing a living part of yourself was seen as a way of appeasing the gods in the hope that they would allow you to go on living.
This belief is ancient in origin and can be found described in a first-centur
y Latin work of fiction The Satyricon, attributed to Roman author Petronius. The central character Encolpius and his lover Giton have their heads shaved at sea and their companion Hesus interprets their actions as a bad omen because of the superstition practised by sailors on the verge of being drowned of offering their hair to the gods in return for their lives. Hesus says ‘audio enim non licere cuiquam mortalium in nave neque ungues neque capillos deponere, nisi cum pelago ventus irascitur.’ (‘For I hear that it is not permitted to any mortal on board a ship to cut his nails or hair except while the wind and sea rage.’) It is later revealed that Hesus was right to be fearful of the omen because their ship is then hit by a storm in which another of their companions is killed.