AN INQUIRY ON BLACK CATS.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 11, 14 January 1929, Page 6

AN INQUIRY ON BLACK CATS.

Superstitions, unlike Civil servants, may retire, but apparently they never die. There are still million* of enlightened gentlemen who step automatically across the cracks in a pavement, who shiver occasionally on Fridays and leap years, who walk circumspectly under a ladder (as, indeed, is wise enough if there is a painter on it)[ who strikes two matches always to liirht three cigarettes. All this is well enough and harmless. but there is opportunity in it for interesting delving into humanity's past. " One ventures the'assertion that not one of these familiar superstitions has had its origin satisfactorily explained. There are plenty of theories; some plausible enough, but all unproved, and the history of the derivations of words, a' subject in many ways parallel to the origins' of superstitious, is enough to prove that mere imaginable relations are all too often misleading. The "trade winds." for example, have nothing to do with commerce, but were named because they have a persistent path; once willed their "trade," as now we would say "trend." The mysterious potency of thirteen has been ascribed to analogy with the Last Supper, to the fact that the. number is a "perfect" one, indivisible into parts, and to scores, we inwpine. of other plausible theories. Only laborious historical research could disclose which idea, if any, holds the truth.

The fear of black cats is even more a mine of interest, one believes, should some patient inquirer explore it. Were plausibility enough, one might think of ancient beliefs in familiar spirits or departed souls housed in animal habitations. Such beliefs are not yet dead. White elephants still live luxuriously in Siam. and only the other day natives ro<*e in South Africa because some hunter killed a white rhinoceros. Somewhere in ancient times repose, we doubt not. clues to the real reasons why black cats are so potent for ill luck. The inquiry would be laborious, and one suspects that no one would pay to get it'done. but just the same it is a pity that no one has time to sit down and do it.