SUPERSTITIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18754, 6 January 1923, Page 15

SUPERSTITIONS

BLACK CATS AND MIRRORS. CULT OF THE MASCOT. ' It is curious how superstitions survive, notwithstanding free and compulsory education. That entertaining writer “John o’ London,” in the literary journal of the Game name, has been looking into the whole mutter, and in the opening of an illuminating article on the subject, asks:—Have you noticed that an enormous amount of wood has been touched of late? You tell a man that you have never had the “flu,” and he replies, “Touch wood.” Obediently, you touch it; or it is the other way about. This superstition was now to me only four or five years ago. Then I found it rampant in Fleet Street, where the sanest men i know walk and talk. In Fleet Street enough wood has been touched in the last year to provide the seating accommodation for the next Dempsey-Carpentier fight. 1 now touch wood without being counselled to do so. Why ? I have no superstition in the matter, unless I am too superstitious to reject the superstitions of other people, who may or may not be really superstitious. Bacon said, “Thera is a superstition in avoiding superstition.” That should have been my repartee to a friend with whom I was talking the other day. Ho told me that he had not a single superstition. I tried him with salt, and ladders, and hawthorn, and white heather, and the third cigarette, and mascots, and stairs, and black cats, and falling pictures, and the new moon, and the broken lookingglass, and burning cars, and boots on the table, and Friday, and 13, but he never winced; ho neither holds nor observes superstitions, unless the superstition of avoiding them, but as 1 have said, I forgot to quote Bacon. TOUCH WOOD! Our talk set mo thinking and self-examin-ing. I hold no superstitions, but I observe them—many more, indeed, than I had realised. My Fleet Street mahatmas taught me to touch wood, but they did not tell mo the why or wherefore. Tho custom, I believe, is almost world-wide. Some folklorists think it has a connection with tho wood of the true Cross. It has been associated with heathen veneration for the oak, the itrfr, and tho rowan. My experience is that in these matters there are usually many stories, and no explanation. My friend had asked wo v.-hetber I knew tho origin of tho superstition, so widespread during the war, that it is unlucky to light a third cigarette from one dch. Ho said it had to do with the Trinity, out that in Spain tho luck is reversed; the lighting of the third cigarette releases a soul from Purgatory I THE NEW MOON. I doubt whether many people are really superstitious. They think they are, but if they do not know why they dread to see or do certain things, how can they he under anything more tyrannous than custom? During most of my life I have tried to avoid seeing the new moon through glass. Yet I laugh at astrology. I acquired this habit from a good aunt whose moon-watchman I constituted myself when a small boy; she was deeply grateful if I led her backwards into the garden to behold tho phenomenon. For years I have turned my money over, and wished, on seeing the new moon out of doors. It is not a superstition, but an infection of folly. Y T ot is this honest? It is an ancestral or racial superstition in which I have no belief but which I observe. My wish is always tho same wish, and it happens that it is not one for myself. It seems, however, that it ought to bo selfish and sordid, and “Pounds for Pence” is tho right formula. Similarly, it always seems just worth while to avoid seeing tho new moon through glass. The force of an old irrational belief is greater than we realise. I do not see why the accident should bring trouble, but then I do not see why it should not—you cannot explore a negative; so that when sane and magnetic people around me avoid this way of seeing the new moon, I weakly conform. This superstition, by the way, may be much older than glass windows, for it seems to include other mediums ; you ought not oven to see the new moon reflected in water. One antiquary says that it is widely believed that if you see the new moon through glass you may be certain that you will break glass before the month is out, but he does not explain his explanation. THE BROKEN LOOKING-GLASS. The breaking of a looking-glass terrifies many worthy people. Seven years’ trouble is promised. I have broken one or two in my time, and certainly the biggest smash was followed by the worst luck. This superstition was brought by Tennysoia into his “Lady of Shalott.” I suppose that there arc still many thousands of homes in these islands in which looking-glasses are covered up during thunderstorms. I have often seen it done, but in the name of all that is physical, why? Is it fear of its quicksilver as a metal that might draw tho lightning? Probably not; the cottage woman forgets the quicksilver, but this may be tho explanation. PASSING ON THE STAIRS. How often have I been warned off stairs lest someone bo so unlucky as to pass me on them ! But this superstition is confined to private houses; one never meets with it in a big office building, or in a block of flats. What is its origin? It does not seem to have troubled the angels on Jacob’s ladder. But ladders are still unlucky if you walk under them, more especially if a pot of paint drops on your head. I once saw this happen, and a respectable man painted red from head to foot. I am a picker-up of horseshoes, there is no 1 denying it. I can believe that a horseshoe was once a charm against witchcraft, but then I don’t believe in witchcraft any more than in ghosts. When you have found your horseshoe it becomes a solemn question which way you hang it up. Some say with the end up (to hold tho luck), some tho other. THE HORSE-SHOE. Antiquaries associate the horse-shoe with the crescent moon and Oriental folk lore; it this be right, the horns should bo in the upward position. Others connect it with tho Greek letter omega (“X am Alpha and Omega”), and hang tho shoe with the points down. Others, again, have much to say about the rainbow. When I spill salt—and it is difficult not to do it in some restaurants—l shamefacedly throw a pinch over my left shoulder, though I have no belief whatever that ill-luck will follow the accident. At least. I don't believe I believe in it No doubt it is unlucky to spill salt because it is clumsy to dio it, but why throw away deliberately what you have first spilt by accident? Some explanations o t these beliefs are at onca reasonable and absurd. For example, a writer in an old volume of “Notes and Queries” thus accounts for tho belief that to put a garment on wrong side outwards is lucky: “This would rather augur carelessness. It is, however, more likely to be done by an early riser, one who gets up before it is light. These active people generally attain success, which is, after all. the true word lor luck ” MASCOTS. Do you carry a "moacot” ? A most clearsighted and modern man showed me. a few week* ago, a piece of coal which, he said, was always in nis pocket. I am afraid I reminded him that this is the favourite charm of pick-pockets. Tho following paragraph, which appeared in the City Press, is, I believe, not at all out of date; “That a mystic value attaches to a piece of coal when it is carried in one's pocket is the superstition that prevails among thieves. It appears, judging by the remarks made in a case heard the other day at the Mansion House Police Court, that burglars almost invariably carry a small piece ot coal with them when they start out on an expedition. The more successful they are, and the greater their good luck in avoiding capture, tho more highly do they prize wliat they regard as their talisman. They choose another piece of coal when their old treasure has. lost its charm, and they are unfortunate enough to fall into tho hands of the police.” A POLICEMAN’S TALISMAN. Does a policeman carry in his pocket a miniature pair of tongs? The mascot habit is now enormously in fashion. To me it ecems unaccountable. I can understand vague superstitions which haunt the mind but were never ebosen by it. But carrying a. mascot looks like real belief. Is there enough good luck in tho world to share out among all the people who can now produce swastikas? On the whole I agree with my sceptical frien’d, though I am more vulnerable to those disturbers of the mind. Oliver Wendell Holmes put the truth very well, I think, when ho said: “We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly QUt of tho superstitious fears which were implanted in tho imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them.”