We Irish are said to be a superstitious race of people – and so we are. Even those of us who deny being superstitious will be loath to fly in the face of something they say will bring bad luck. One of the ‘Seven Wonders of Fore’ is the water from the well that will not boil. As a teenager, I told my mother one Sunday that my brother Willie and I were going to take home a bottle of the water to see if we could boil it. Mammy nearly had a fit at the very idea. ‘It would be unlucky to try that’, she said – and that was the end of that proposed experiment.
When a cow calved at home the ‘cleanings’ (afterbirth) was never buried; instead it was thrown up into a whitethorn bush. My father said that if you buried the ‘cleanings’, you would bury the calf. I never heard that anywhere else and now I wonder if that superstition was widespread – or perhaps Daddy just didn’t like digging!
To this day – and no later than last week, when a delightful young couple, Deirdre and Barry, bought a few Dexters from me, I give back a ‘luck penny’ out of the payment. That was a tradition at the fairs years ago and where the seller would spit on the ‘bit of luck’ before handing over the coins.
Is putting out the ‘Child of Prague’ to bring a fine day for a wedding just an Irish thing, or does the custom occur in other countries as well? And speaking of other countries, we are no more superstitious than the rest of them. Half of the British people involved in a fairly extensive survey, admitted to being superstitious; but 74 per cent said they ‘touch wood’ in the hope of making things happen or not. A majority also said that if somebody said they had an itchy nose, they would comment that the person was going to have a fight!
Americans are every bit as superstitious as the rest of us. They go for carrying a rabbit’s foot, a four-leaf clover and that sort of thing; in fact 12 percent of them wear a lucky charm – in the same manner as Irish people used always wear a miraculous medal. And wait for this one … 400,000 people kiss the Blarney Stone every year – and the majority of them say ‘Gee’!
You might still see a horseshoe hung over a door in Ireland. This was said, not only to bring good luck, but to keep evil spirits at bay – and if a black cat crosses your path you are on the right side of the lucky line for that day.
Whether you admit to being superstitious or not, I bet you will walk around a ladder as against walking under it? This didn’t work out too lucky for a guy somewhere in England a few years ago; he stepped out on the street to avoid the ladder and both he and the cyclist who hit him finished up in hospital!
If we carried our collective dread of Friday 13th, we would spend that day in bed. This goes all the way back to the Last Supper and the belief that Judas was the 13th person to sit down at the table. A lot of people will go to great lengths to insure that there are never 13 diners seated at a dinner table.
Back in the day when we all smoked cigarettes, nobody I ever knew would take the third light from the same match. This belief in the ‘bad luck’ of the third light was well founded and dates back to the trenches of WW1. The longer the match stayed lit, the more time an enemy sniper had to take out the unfortunate 3rd soldier.
Throwing salt over your shoulder or refusing to open an umbrella inside is bizarre behaviour from an otherwise sensible and sane adult. But that is the pull of superstition. Have you never ‘crossed you fingers’? I know this is mostly harmless habits, but I also know people who profess not to believe in heaven, hell, or religion – but would be scared out of their wits if they broke a mirror!
There are ancient cures which should come under the heading of superstition – but very few of us will knock this one. I have never heard of anybody turning down the possibility of a superstitious cure for a sickness which befell them. The ‘7th son of a 7th son’ has the cure of several ailments and a boy whose father died before he was born also has a special gift.
What about all the good money thrown into the wishing well … and searching for a second magpie after seeing a lone one?
And you claim not to be superstitious …!?
Don’t Forget
The rabbit’s foot didn’t bring much luck to the rabbit who had it in the first place.
