SAILORS' SUPERSTITIONS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LIII, Issue 9304, 21 March 1907, Page 3

SAILORS' SUPERSTITIONS.

it has been said that it is the romance of the sea that makes the sailor, of all men, particularly open to that kind of influence that depends for its strength, not on solid fact, but upon the imaginative beliefs handed down in his own calling aittd accepted without question from generation to generation. In other words, the 6ailor is the most superstitious of men.

Why a seafaring man should hate and dread a cat is mot very evident ; but nautical tradition is against the feline, and the jack tax will have none on board. Any sailor will tell you that to ship a cat is a sure way to prepare the vessel for a full share of disastrous gales.

Then? is a. curious amount of collateral evidence to show how sailors object to cats. To those tihings which are most dietasteful to aim the maj.iner applies the name of the animal he dislikes. Weak tea is unpalatable ; so lie styles it cat lap. A short sleep h unsaiisfactory, and he calls it a cat nap. A breath of wind insufficient to move the ship is a cat's paw ; a greater amount of bieeze is a cat's skin.

In days cf old sailors had great veneration for odd numbers, a belief still traceable in the number of guns firod for salutes. Sneezing to the left was a serum matter, though a .'.neeze t*> tho light meant no harm. Themistocles once detained his ship on account of the bad weather that he feared would follow a. sneeze.

The sailor's conviction that a shdp's. bell will toll, however finny lashed, when the doomed vessel sinks beneath the waves, poptiical, if rot well founded.

The origin of the belief of the efficacy of whistling to raise the wind is unknown, but the belief itself is widespread, and has been held in eJI lands. It used to be said that care must be taken to whistle o.t the right moment. If it is done in a calm a pleasant breeze will come, but if done when there is already wind it will arouse a hurricane. It is a matfcex of common knowledge that sailors, pay -great attention to the presence of the biids knoven as- petrels, or "Mother Carey's chickens."' It it probably because of the extreme 1 sensitiveness of sea birds to weathor, their mysterious fiesence far front land, and their supposed commuraon with aageis, that they exercise so great an attraction for Jack's imagiuation. Proplecies of fair or foul ■wieathcr arc founded on the bird's: movements.