Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1885 — Lingering Superstitions. [ARTICLE]

Lingering Superstitions.

A few weeks ago a young fisherman, engaged in his calling on the English coast, fell into the sea and was drowned. This occurrence, not an unusual one, would have passed unnoticed had it not been for a singular coincidence. It happened that exactly one year before to the very day the young fisherman’s father came to his death in precisely the same manner. The people of the fishing village were persuaded that this was the direct act of Providence, and at once pronounced the date on which, at a year’s interval, father and son had perished, “the un-» lucky day” of the family. A belief in “lucky” and “unlucky” days, indeed, survives among the less intelligent classes, not of England only, but of all countries; and this belief is propped up by the recollection of historical events, or events which happen by chance on the same day to families or neighborhoods. Thursday was regarded as the unlucky day of the Tudor sovereigns of England, for on that day died not only Bluff King Hal himself, but his son Edward and his two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. If the prosent English royal family were superstitious, they might well regard the 14th of December as their unlucky day, for that was the date of the death both of Prince Albert and his favorite daughter, the Princess Alice. It is not very long since the belief in lucky and unlucky days caused the country folk in England to observe them religiously. Some of these superstitions seem to us, in these days of enlightenment, strange and amusing enough. It was thought, for instance, that people who were ill of a fever were worse on Sunday than on any other day of the week; and that if they perchance grew better on a Sunday, it was a sign that they would soon have a relapse. Another, superstition, which is, perhaps, not yet extinct, was that the day of the week on which the fourteenth of May fell was an unlucky day all the rest of the year; and on that day people would not get married, or do any serious business. In Northern Scotland, January and May have always been looked upon as unlucky months, during which it would be flying in the face of an unhappy fate to get married. It is curious that there are still many intelligent persons who do not like to sit down thirteen at a table; or to overturn a salt-cellar; or to enter upon any serious undertaking on Friday. Among the lucky signs still believed in by English rustics are the visits of strange bees to the garden, the meeting with a flock of sheep, and the finding of a horse-shoe; but it is very unfortunate for a man to put his stockings on insideout, and to meet a funeral procession at right angles. If a person’s eye itches, it is said among the country people that that person will either weep soon, or be kissed by a fool. If a maid, on St. Valentine’s day, on going out, meets a man before she does a woman, it is a sign that she will be wedded before the end of the year. All these singular superstitions have grown up and have received additions in the long centuries during which the world has been slowly growing in civilization and riper reason. But as time goes on, these superstitions grow fainter and fainter, and in time they will die out, as the light of knowledge more and more illumines mankind.— Youth’s Companion.