SUPERSTITIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 279, 24 November 1928, Page 10 (Supplement)

SUPERSTITIONS.

LINGERING TO-DAY.

RAG-BAG OF OLD IDEAS. THE MAGIC OF IRON. We are the heirs of all the ages, retails Oswald Barron, English authority on folk-lore, introducing a series of articles on superstition in modern life in the London "Daily Mail." What we learned yesterday, he says, is the truth as far as we understand what the new science has heen telling. But it goes into our pack with odd things we picked up ages ago, before we could read and write or trim our nails. He goes on: "What a rag-bag we carry! Hero we are, not quite sure of everything that the professors say, not wholly disbelieving what we were told by the witchdoctors at tho beginning, of the Stone Age.

"They say that our new-born babies will cling to a linger or to an umbrella handle and hang from it as the young ape will hang to the bough. This is so, for I have seen a baby do it. A professor of higher mathematics, who looked like the moderncst of professors, told me that if you wore an iron ring hidden in your golden ring it would keep oil the rheumatism. Some forefather of his must have learned as much so soon as we came to work in iron and make magical toys out of that wonderful metal.

"Iron is still magical. One must be careful in handling it, careful to make no gifts of knives. When a penknife changes hands we take a threepenny bit for it, cloaking the gift as though it were a sale,

"Your door, is it charmed with tho holy iron against death, against malice of witchcraft? My front door is safe; so soon as we moved into our house I nailed up the old horseshoe which an omnibus horse had cast at my feet. Even so have householders nailed up tho shoo ever since they had the holy iron; it kept them safe from the charms of tho wild folk in tho caves on the other side of the hill, who had no iron, who were still chipping Hint. A powerful thing is the horseshoe of iron, the shoe of tho horse, which is a sacred beast.

"Gold, also, that is a mighty thing. It was but last week, when I had a stye on the eyelid, a young woman of the newest fashion besought me to strike tho stye with a golden wedding ring. I thanked her, but I had done that the first thing in the morning. Now the stye is gone; how handily this old magic comes in! The Other Side of the Head. "Doubtless wo believe the words written in wise books by tho professors; we must believe them, and reverently, But that is with one side of our heads; tho other side goes on recalling what our ancestors' said in the old time as they sat with their feet to the fire. As I write this, I shudder to think of that man who, at dinner in my own house, tried again and again to send tho decanter round from left to right, widdershins, tho way that is against tho sun, A man like that would have brought down a curse on the house.

"So we live, half by the new rules of wise men and half by ancient lore that comes down to us out of the darkness of the darkest age. Wo are yet playing with charms, considering dreams and signs, and toying with scraps of old magic. "If you doubt this, think of what happened at Weymouth on the day when, as a foolish prophet had told Weymouth, it should be whelmed by a wave of the sea. There were many who heeded tho prophet; nobody, I think, put questions to men of science. At Weymouth men waited with their eyes upon the clock for the terrible moment; they giggled, but they watched the clock."

But of all tho superstitious people who see omens, portents and strange warning signs none is quite so rationalistic in his folly as the gambler, writes Edgar Wallace, English novelist and playwright, who contributes another number to this series. He is thinking, he says, more particularly of professional gamblers, and not of the dilettanti who invest their louis on the black or red. He goes on: First Horse You See. "It is the amateur, .the veriest dabbler in chance, who carries rabbits' feet, eschews green, and regards the passing of a funeral on his way to a racecourse as a very bad sign if he passes it coming toward him and a very good sign if he passes it from behind.

"There is one superstition which persists, and that is to'back the first racehorse you see or tho horse of the first owner you meet on your way to a racecourse. It is an inexplicable but nevertheless a peculiar fact that this tip very often comes off.

"The left hand plays an important part in the superstitions of the gambler. I know men who swear they can never win at cards if the dealer is left-handed. There are players who, to change their luck, will get out and walk three times round the chair in which they have been sitting, but it is always righthanded—that is to say, clockwise.

"Monte Carlo in the season is a welter of superstition. There is a Frenchman who goes there every year to play a system. Across his ample waistcoat is a large gold chain, from every link of which depends a charm; tigers' claws, kewpies, and heaven knows what other mysterious gadgets repose in every pocket, and every finger of his hands is covered with charm rings. Nor is he unique. If you stroll round tho tables you will see at every one people who have 'before them some potent magic to charm luck their way.

"I know two or three men who bet very largely who would not dream of gambling in the accepted sense if they had started the day badly with an unpleasant letter by, the morning's post or some unpleasant happening in their domestic circle. They know that they have been thrown off their balance and that reason is unseated, and, since the mind is a very delicately adjusted piece of mechanism, and the mind includes such imponderable qualities as telepathy—which plays a greater part in professional gambling than most people realise—they play light.

"And yet the non-superstitious pros have their own peculiar superstitions. 1 was on my way to Doncaster once with a, man who bets in thousands. We were hardly out of King's Cross before he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket and took out a golden sovereign—this Was after the war—and threw it through the open window. " 'What's the idea V I asked. "'My brother gave ?ue this for luck. A new mascot always brings bad luck.' i "Perhaps there are vo non-supersti-tious gamblers after all^"