QUEER FEARS

Greymouth Evening Star, 27 August 1928, Page 9

QUEER FEARS

WHY DO BABIES HATE BLACK?

Superstition is defined as the “unreasoning awe or fea ( r of something unknown, mysterious, or imaginary, especially in connection with religion; a religious belief or practice founded upon fear or ignorance,” writes May Edginton, the popular novelist, in the “Daily Mail.”

This does not, in the generally accepted sense of the word, go far enough; though countless instances of religious superstition are still rife in many countries. The still lively belief in a definite flaming hell is, for in stance, ono that comes uppermost to the mind. The Portuguese have a superstition that if someone dies with a duty undone his spirit will enter another body and there dwell until its neglected task is performed. And longago the ancient Roman deities were held to be especially charged with the destinies of that city.

The practice of witchcraft in the East, is here thought of as superstition, whereas it is proved in actual practice, as has been confirmed by knowledgeable and educated people. Ami to look back over the terrible history of the Russian revolution, and the superstitious theories that arose about Rasputin inflaming the .masses is :• veritable trail of gunpowder to which any hand may set the fire.

Superstition has made history. Early in the spring of 1555 the young Princess Elizabeth, bored in what was, to all intents and purposes, her imprisonment at Woodstock, used to talk and study with John Dee, of Oxford — who afterwards became celebrated as an astrologer and mathematician, not only in England, but throughout Europe.

He had, it was supposed, a skill in divination —comparable, one imagines, to the art of the clairvoyant of to-day —and by these absorbing practices he obtained an influence over her which lasted throughout her reign. She was brilliantly clever, strongminded. clear-witted; but Dr. Dee — ■‘the conjuror,’ ’as he has been called —■had, thus, access to her mind, and to a greqt extent secret power over her opinions and subsequent actions. History does not lead us to infer that his power was baneful; rather was it watchful,. protective; an assurance for himself‘of Royal favour. But it added, nevertheless, considerably to the danger of the young Elizabeth in the perilous years before she came to the throne, because she was suspected of consorting with him in dark mysteries designed for the downfall of the unhappy Queen Mary.

The superstitions of the world, right up to the present day, afford a vast and interesting study. They have changed boundaries, wrecked countries and probably killed more men. women and children than ever were killed by war or disease. These are the superstitions that may ,be called veritable killers. But there are, too, the smallest superstitions that merely guide beliefs and behaviour. Of these latter, for example, it is still believed in the Island of Lesbos and in parts of Bulgaria that a man’s soul is in his shadow, while other peoples believe his soul to be his reflection in water or a mirror.

The doctrine of lunar sympathy remains a present-day superstition all over the world; famous modern clairvoyantes are known to allude to it and to profess to work by it. Belief in sympathetic magic is conlined mostly to the coloured races. Sympathetic magic deals with the sympathy which exists between a man and any severed portion of his person, such as a. lock of his hair, or even his nails. So that —it is believed —whoever get;-; possession of such a part of him can work his will from any distance upon the person' from whom such part lias been taken.

“But “unreasoning awe or fear,” as I have suggested, does not really go far enough to cover the word “superstition.” It is usually applied more loosely than that. It is usually held to cover a host of inexplicable feelings and certainties and warnings which are often classed as intuitions.

Definite examples of the working of intuition are not easy to trace and find. Animals and very young children have intuition more highly developed than lias an adult.

DOGS’ INTUITION. A dog, for instance, knows a bad man or woman. That does not mean that a dog knows a murderer, a thief or any other conventional sinner; those he may happen to adore. But ho knows the mean, the cruel, the cold people and he gives them a wide berth.

A small baby, before the materialisms of the earth have impresssed him, knows these people too. I have seen a three-months-old baby turn weeping and trembling from an outwardly charming and suave and pretty woman, when ho would have gone ■crowing with delight into the arms of, say, the roughest of good-hearted gardeners. Babies are no respecters of rank, but ony respecters of persons. But later, as the world takes them to itself, they lose this sharp intuition, 'this heavenly sense. At the age of two or three they are, as a t mother ‘sadly said to me, “anyone's ’for an orange.

Young babies hate black. Especially is a large black hat anathema and terror to them. They must, one thinks, so newly born, have a sharp sense of death. We are all superstitious in some way. Walking under a ladder, sitting at table, lighting three cigarettes with one match, do not worry me. But two or three years ago. when I was walking down the Haymarket, a youg news-seller offered me the evening paper. I shook my head and walked on. Quite cheerfully, lie hastened after me, thrust a tiny black cat into my hand, said politely, “Then take this for luck,” and was back at his pitch before I could even reply. This happened to me three times in the neighbourhood of Haymarket and Piccadilly; and the third time I went back to the news-seller —a young, cheerful, gipsyish fellow —bought, a paper, refused change out of a shilling and asked him what the black cut meant.

He smiled and said. “Nothing." But I had a queer feeling they were not for hick; that I had come up against something I wasn’t quite easy about. My silly superstition, of which 1 was ashamed, sent, me back to buy the paper I had refused, and made me give Shilling. 1 was “buying myself off.” Absurd? Extremely, but all the same, what little curse exactly were the black cats supposed to bring?