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SUPERSTITIONS |
There were quite a few superstitions sayings handed down from the past which I heard from my Grandmother, Mother and other elderly people, such as: If a parent died, say the mother, and her son died shortly after, then you would hear a remark such as "His Mother's called him". I had not heard this remark until it was voiced in my presence a few months ago.
To put a new pair of shoes on the table was to invite bad luck
Should a crow settle, on the chimney or roof top it was a
sign of a death in the family.
Two spoons in one cup or saucer was a sign of a wedding. Two knives crossed meant a
quarrel was impending. Breaking a tea cup would be followed by two other breakages.
Stirring the tea in the pot could provoke a quarrel, hence
the term to "stir it up
Accidently spilling salt was a bad omen, it could be bad luck - to offset this you had to
throw some over your left shoulder. Dropping a spoon of any material, even of wood, meant
you would have a boring visitor. The wooden spoon is the emblem of the fool. DO not open
an umbrella in the house, it invites death. Then the common one: do not walk under a
ladder. I understand now that this comes from the day when executions were done in public,
and the person to be hung had to climb a ladder to get to the scaffold. To crack or break
a mirror meant seven years bad luck.
Telling someone's fortune by reading the tea leaves left in the cup after the person
concerned had drunk the tea, always caused a great deal of amusement. It was one of my
mother's after tea pastimes.
The collecting of nods was another local superstition. You would ask someone to give you a nod of their head. You then put a cross on a piece of paper, the more you collected the greater would be your reward. Whatever you wished for would happen. So, together with some sale on the paper, it was buried in some secret place and after a few days it was recovered and then your wish would come true.
What a beautiful world of make-believe, how lovely to have shared the delight of the fairies now wandering the mists of one's memory. It is like shedding a cosy garment as these Santa Claus phantorns become merged into the hard realism and tantalising mysteries, but ever revealing wonders of life's experience.
And "I have felt a Presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts, - a sense sublime". - "Wordsworth".