Mythology

106 or two; we must give him time to get over the dreadful event. So we will play whilst he is sorrowing. This logic would hardly do credit to a Comanche Indian, but there it is all the same. A Monto Carlo player commits suicide, and there follows a rush for the tables. Why? Because the players believe in luck, and for some reason they fancy a sufferer s death must inevitably turn the tide in favour of themselves. The crooked pin referred to in No. 5 is an idea borrowed from other sources. Brand has a note to the effect that: About a mile to the west of Jarrow (near Newcastle-upon-Tyne) there is a well, still called Bede s Well, to which as late as the year 1740 it was a prevailing custom to bring children troubled with any disease or infirmity; a crooked pin was put in, and the well laved dry between each dipping. My informant has seen twenty children brought together on a Sunday to be dipped in this well, at which also, on Midsummer Eve, there was a great resort of neighbouring people, with bonfires, musick, etc. No. 6 is a bad omen, because it suggests careless handling of the cards on account of lack of interest, and not watching the progress of the game; and No. 7 is even stronger in this respect. No. 9 belongs to the same category, only in this case the player is giving an excited attention to the game, and loses his head. No. 8 is apparently a joke pure and simple. Every card player has his own or her own private superstitions: a certain hand always presages good luck or ill-luck; the winning of the first game means winning the third; to play before 6 p.m. on Fridays is never fortunate, and so on. But the whole batch of card superstitions has its source in an attempt to formulate laws for the one thing that seems to have no law chance.

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105 cal and without reason; others indicative of observation, and having a basis in commonsense. I propose first to enumerate a few of them, and afterwards to make an attempt at the discovery of their origin. OMENS RELATING TO CARD GAMES. 1. To play cards on the table without a table-cloth is unlucky. 2. He who lends money at play will lose; he who borrows money at play will win. 3. In playing cards, walk straight from the table and make a round turn, if playing for money. 4. There is a superstition at Monto Carlo that immediately after a suicide all those playing against the bank will win. There is therefore a perfect rush for the tables when the lugubrious news is known. 5. If you wish a person to win at cards, stick a pin in his coat. 6. To drop a card on the floor when playing is a bad omen. 7. To sing while playing cards is a sign that your side will lose. 8. Don t play at a table with a cross-eyed man whether he is your partner or opponent; you will lose. 9. If you get into a passion when playing cards you will have more bad luck; for the demon of bad luck always follows a passionate player, It is truly difficult to imagine how the first item could have originated; there is absolutely no sense in a connection between skill in a game and the covering of the table on which it is played; if the objection had arisen out of the difference between a mahogany table and a steel table, one might have fancied electric forces, or mesmeric forces, had something to do with the origin of this vain notion. It has been suggested that the table-cloth gives an opportunity of manipulating cards which a bare table does not. Perhaps. And yet all superstitions cannot have arisen in the minds of cheats and dubious people. No. 2 is contrary to experience, at anyrate the second half is. The plunger who will lose all his own money and borrows to continue playing, generally loses. No. 3 has a touch of humour in it grim humour, no doubt. It seems to come from the heart of a wily but skilful player, who knows the fascination of the game to the novice with keenly awakened desires; and when age and experience speak they counsel a walk away from the table, a round turn and well, that is just it; it is a chance afforded the player to think. Shall I play or shall I not for it is for money? This is about as sensible a bit of superstition as could be invented. NO. 4 is a specimen of the modern mind at work. And how like the old mind! It is as if the players said, The God of Chance has had a big success; he has won thousands and thousands; and he has driven his victim to suicide and death. He can t be the same god for a day

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104 come from the actual horse ridden by a baron; but for a long time it has been usual to commute the toll by paying for a fancy shoe, and as a result the tributes in Oakham Hall vary greatly in shape and size, and are even made of different metals. They are mostly dated, the most important exception being a large shoe given by Queen Elizabeth, who probably sent it about 1556, after her visit to Lord Burghley. Among them are several from the Royal Family- Queen Victoria (when Princess Victoria) in 1835; Queen Alexandra (when Princess of Wales) in 1881; and his Majesty the King (when Prince of Wales) in 1895. In all, there are nearly 200 shoes which are of all sizes, from seven feet in length down to one only big enough for the small-hoofed race horse. This tribute has been demanded for seven centuries, and tradition ascribes its origin to the truculent Walchelin de Ferreris, to whom Henry II. gave the Barony of Oakham. (12) THE DUTY OF NOT SAVING A DROWNING MAN. If ever there existed an inhuman superstition, surely this is the one; for to see a fellow mortal fighting for life, and to refuse to render him assistance, is the height of cruelty. But, the reader will ask, does such a superstition really exist? Tylor speaks of a recent account (1864) where fishermen in Bohemia did not venture to snatch a drowning man from the waters, the notion being that some ill luck would follow. Sir Walter Scott in the Pirate speaks of Bryce, the pedlar, refusing to save the shipwrecked sailor from drowning, and even remonstrating with him on the rashness of such a deed. Are you mad? said the pedlar, you that have lived sae lang in Zetland to risk the saving of a drowning man? Wot ye not, if you bring him to life again he will be sure to do you some capital injury? The same superstition can be found among the St. Kilda islanders, the boatmen of the Danube, French and English sailors, and even out of Europe, and among less civilised races. If these statements be correct, and Professor Tylor s name is behind them, what is at the back of this determination to let a drowning man drown? The idea seems to be this: that when a man is drowning it is the intention of the gods that he should be drowned; and that the rescuer, if successful in rescuing him, must be the substitute and be drowned himself later on. You cannot cheat Fate out of a life; that appears to be the argument. Even an accidental falling into the water is explained by the savage as the action of the spirit throwing the man into the stream with the object of taking his life. The indisposition of many people to try to rescue such may in part be explained by Tylor s theory of Survival, a theory suggesting that the thoughts and actions of the past are repeated by us unconsciously. It cannot be that the paragraph in the Press about the callous conduct of observers is always due to cowardice the fear to plunge in and effect a rescue. Nor can it be the conscious inability to do anything, or the paralysis of mind due to the sight of a fellowman on the point of sinking for the last time. It must be some small remainder of a once prevalent and all prevailing notion that to attempt to save a drowning man was unlucky. (13) PLAYING CARD SUPERSTITIONS. It is somewhat singular that Brand should have confined his notes to the growth of the various card games in England, omitting entirely all reference to the superstitions which cloud the atmosphere of the gambler, and even the card player who does not play for money, or, if he does, for very small stakes. In games of chance and skill combined, we find just that sort of uncertain feeling which provokes all kinds of theories as to what is right and wrong; the right and wrong in this association meaning no more than success or failure. A search for such superstitious theories is speedily rewarded; the joint authors of The Encyclaepadia of Superstitions have collected quite a little crowd of them; some old, some new; some whimsi-

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103 The usher seating the first patron of the evening fondly imagines that he will be lucky until the end of the performance, but if the first coupon he handles calls for one of the many thirteen seats, he is quite sure that it will bring him bad luck for the rest of the night. To the usher, a tip from a woman for a programme also spells misfortune, and few of the old- timers will accept it. A woman fainting in the theatre is sure to bring bad luck to the usher in whose section she is seated. Not to hear the first lines of the play is to invite misfortune, so he believes. An usher feels sure that if he makes a mistake in seating the first person in his section, it is sure to be quickly followed by two more. The first tip of the season is always briskly rubbed on the trousers-leg, and kept in the pocket for the rest of the season as a coaxer. To receive a smile over the footlights from one of the company also brings luck. It would be a futile task to try to discover the origin of all these separate superstitions. Fortunately it is not necessary, for there is an easier and more natural solution. The omens and mascots of stage life have their source in the artistic temperament. We do not find these superstitions in the life of the music hall artist, at least not in the same degree; and whilst the actor-manager of a theatre might have some scruples for the superstitions of the profession, the manager of a music hall would have none at all, because he faces business on a purely business basis. Now, that is the difference between the actor-man and the commercial-man; the former has to deal with a crowd of uncortainties the fickleness of the public, the machinery of the stage, the health of the troupe, lapses of memory, and a score of other items equally trying. Add to this the constant endeavour to act a picture in his own mind, or to interpret a part in a classic drama, and you have a psychology full of weird possibilities in its conclusions. Viewed from this standpoint, the actor s superstitions are to some extent natural; were he not of the artistic temperament he would be lacking in the sympathy his art requires. But still, he would not be the worse for shedding a few of these intellectual oddities; for, after all, most of them are based in fear and a lack of self-confidence. (10) CHRISTENING SHIPS. When the wife of some Admiralty official touches a button to release a new cruiser from the stays, and breaks a bottle of wine over her bows, the spectators accept these actions as the right thing, because they have been performed for centuries. But the spectators do not usually enquire into the origin of the custom, to discover which we have to go back to the ancient libations practised on the launching of a new vessel. A priest with a lighted torch, and possessed also of an egg and some brimstone, was in attendance; and amid shouts of acclamation it was devoted to the god whose image it carried. Greek and Roman vessels generally carried in the prow a carved image of some deity, to whose name the launching service was dedicated. The image remained as a feature of ship-building until quite recent years, and we retain a semblance of the old ceremony. (11) HORSESHOE TRIBUTES IN OAKHAM CASTLE. Evelyn, on August 14, 1654, tells us that he took a journey in the Northern parts, and in passing through Oakham he saw some of the celebrated shoes on the Castle gates. Mr Michael M Donagh says: Perhaps the most singular mediaeval tribute now exacted is the horseshoe required from every peer who passes through Oakham. Originally the shoe had to

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102 leader would not allow a musician to play a yellow clarionet everything would go wrong if he did. Faults of memory are also attributed by actors to the costume he may be wearing. Certain wigs bring luck, and some actors will wear one even though the part does not need one. If an actor s shoes squeak while he is making his first entrance, it is a sure sign that he will be well received by the audience. To kick off his shoes and have them alight on their soles and remain standing upright, means good luck to him, but if they fall over, bad luck is to be expected. They will also bring him all kinds of misfortune if placed on a chair in the dressing-room. If, when an acrobat throws his cuffs on the stage, preparatory to doing his turn, they remain fastened together, all will go well; but if, on the other hand, they separate, he must look out for squalls. Cats have always been considered the very best fortune-producing acquisitions a theatre can possess, and are welcomed and protected by actor and stagehand alike. But if a cat runs across the stage during the action of the play, misfortune is sure to follow. Bad luck will also come to those who kick a cat. The actor goes the layman one better in mirror superstitions. He believes it will bring him bad luck to have another person look into the mirror over his shoulder while he is making up before it. As much care must be taken by the actor on making his entrances as in the repeating of the lines. Not for their importance as an effect on the audience, but to avoid the hoodoo attached to certain entries. For example: To stumble over anything on making an entrance, the actor firmly believes, will cause him to miss a cue or forget his lines. If his costume catches on a piece of scenery as he goes on, he must immediately retrace his steps and make a new entrance, or else suffer misfortunes of all sorts during the rest of the performance. Even the drop-curtain contributes its share of stage superstitions, as nearly every actor and manager believes it is bad luck to look out at the audience from the wrong side of it when it is down. Some say it is the prompt side that casts the evil spell, while others contend it is the opposite side. The management not being sure from which side the bad luck is likely to accrue, places a peep-hole directly in the centre. The players are not the only ones in the theatre having superstitions. The front of the house have their pet ones as well. In the box-office, if the first purchaser of seats for a new production is an old man or woman, it means to the ticket-seller that the play will have a long run. A young person means the reverse. A torn bank-note means a change of position for the man in the box-office, while a gold certificate, strange to say, is a sign of bad luck.

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101 This sounds like a purely private opinion, and may be dismissed without further argument. There is a good deal to be said for the growing of yews to make bows. Sir Henry Ellis remarks that Shakespeare in Richard II. speaks of the double fatal yew because the leaves of the yew are poison, and the wood is employed for instruments of death. On this Stevens observes, that from some of the ancient statutes it appears that every Englishman, while archery was practised, was obliged to keep in his house either a bow of yew or some other wood. It should seem, therefore, that yews were not only planted in churchyards to defend the churches from the wind, but on account of their use in making bows; while by the benefit of being secured in inclosed places, their poisonous quality was kept from doing mischief to cattle. The difficulty of this otherwise reasonable conjecture is seen in the question: Are not all plantation grounds fenced from cattle? And why are there no more than two yew trees in each churchyard if bow wood was so necessary? Sir Thomas Browne, in his Hydriotaphia Urne-buriall, tell us, that among the ancients, the funerall pyre consisted of sweet fuell, cypresse, firre, larix, YEWE, and trees perpetually verdant. And he asks, or rather observes, Whether the planting of yewe in churchyards holds its original from ancient funerall rites, or as an embleme of resurrection from its perpetual verdure, may also admit conjecture. Yes, it admits of conjecture, and in all likelihood man s choice of the yew for funeral associations was determined by its appearance, its longevity, its utility in supplying material for weapons, and its need of segregation on account of its poisonous qualities; in fact, nearly all the suggested facts seem to have played some part in establishing the yew tree where we mostly find it. (9) THEATRE SUPERSTITIONS. It is curious that Brand should not have noticed the superstitions of actors and actresses, for they are as essentially a modern growth as those he has dealt with so fully were of ancient origin; moreover, to compare the two together is to see striking points of difference and analogy. The difference is that the superstitions of the theatre are all of them based on a firm belief in the principle of Luck; they are secular from beginning to end, and without a spark of religious association. The analogy lies in the fact that, like many of the old suptrstitions, they are groundless for the most part, being no more than ipse dixits of leading artists, supposed to be borne out by the experience of the rank and file. To whistle in a theatre is a sign of the worst luck in the world, and there is no offence for which the manager will scold an employee more quickly. Vaudeville performers believe it is bad luck to change the costumes in which they first achieved success. Old actors believe the witches song in Macbeth to possess the uncanny power of casting evil spells, and the majority of them strongly dislike to play in the piece. Hum the tune in the hearing of an old actor and the chances are you will lose his friendship. Actors will not repeat the last lines of a play at rehearsals, nor will they go on the stage where there is a picture of an ostrich if they can avoid it. Let them try the handle of a wrong door when seeking the manager of a theatre, or the office of an agent, and they regard it as an omen of failure. The looping of a drop curtain, the upsetting of a make-up box, are the certain forerunners of evil, just as certain shades of yellow in a tie, or vest, or hat, are thought to exert an injurious influence. Even the orchestra

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100 TOAST, Anagram A SOTT. Exposition. A Toast is like a Sot; or, what is most Comparative, a Sot is like a Toast; For when their substances in liquor sink, Both properly are said to be in drink. (8) YEW TREES IN CHURCHYARDS. There are many theories to account for the ancient practice of planting churchyards and cemeteries with yew trees. Some authorities ascribe it to the adoption of ancient funeral rites; others to the prosaic notion of keeping the wind off the church; others, again, to the warlike need of bows and arrows yew being especially serviceable. A large body of writers believe the use of the yew was symbolic it typified by its unchanging verdure the doctrine of the resurrection. A few cynically assert that yews, being gloomy and poisonous, are rightly used for churchyard decoration; and there are not wanting writers who see in the practice a tribute to the superstitious regard men have always paid to trees. We may examine one or two of these suggestions, although no definite conclusion may be possible. We know that the ancient Britons planted yews near their temples long before Christianity was introduced into England, and this would suggest a custom on the island not necessarily Roman or Christian. A writer in The Gentleman s Magazine (1781) says: We read in the Antiquities of Greece and Rome that the branches of the cypress and yew were the usual signals to denote a house in mourning. Now, sir, as Death was a deity among the antients (the daughter of Sleep and Night), and was by them represented in the same manner, with the addition only of a long robe embroidered with stars, I think we may fairly conclude that the custom of planting the yew in churchyards took its rise from Pagan superstition, and that it is as old as the conquest of Britain by Julius Caesar. Gough, in the Introduction to his second volume of Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain, speaking of the signs of death in houses among the ancients, notices branches of pine and cypress, on the authority of Euripides, Hecuba, 191, 192 Suet. Aug. 101; AEn. xi. 31. He says in a note, Will it be thought a far-fetcht conjecture that yew-trees in churchyards supply the place of cypress round tombs, where Ovid, Trist. III. xiii. 21, says they were placed? Far-fetched or not, the evidence is too slight to enable us to say confidently that the use of the yew comes to us from Pagan times. Barrington, in his Observations on the Statutes, says that trees in a churchyard were often planted to skreen the church from the wind; that, low as churches were built at this time, the thick foliage of the yew answered this purpose better than any other tree. I have been informed, accordingly, that the yew-trees in the churchyard of Gyffin, near Conway, having been lately felled, the roof of the church hath suffered excessively.

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rion, by R. Thorius (1651), the following passages occur: Cast wood upon the fire, thy loyns gird round With warmer clothes, and let the tosts abound In close array, embattled on the hearth, So again: And tell their hard adventures by the fire, While their friends hear, and hear, and more desire, And all the time the crackling chesnuts roast, And each man hath his cup, and each his toast. From these passages it is apparent that the saying, Who gives a toast? is synonymous with Whose turn is it to take up his cup and propose a health? It was the practice to put toast into ale with nutmeg and sugar. Evidently the toast as we know it to-day began in this prac tice, and a good toaster was described with accuracy so far back as 1684 in The New Help to Discourse.

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99 Whatever fancy and superstition may do by way of investing the robin with a glory that does not belong to him, the plain truth is that there is no more impertinent or mischievous thief in the whole tribe of feathers. (7) DRINKING CUSTOMS: TOASTS. When John Smith raises his glass in the saloon bar of The World s End, and proposes the health of his friend, John Jones, he little thinks he is perpetuating a custom which goes back in unbroken succession to the days of the Greeks and Romans. A Roman gallant would drink as many glasses as there were letters in the name of his mistress. Thus Martial: Six cups to Naevia s health go quickly round, And he with seven the fair Justina crowned. The Tatler (vol. i. 24) ventures to account for the origin of the word toast in the following man ner, stating that it had its rise from an accident at Bath in the reign of Charles the Second: It happened that, on a public day, a celebrated beauty of those times was in the Cross Bath, and one of the crowd of her admirers took a glass of the water in which the fair one stood, and drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow, half fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquor, who has ever since been called a toast. This is not con vincing, although it cannot be disproved. But in a book called Checmono

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98 history have borne the marks of an epidemic, and even Dr Mayo was not averse to the proposition that a man who had a wasting disease, or was threatened with one, could imagine himself vampirised and thus spread the contagion to others. Vampirism is only another proof of the power of the mind over the body. It is the fixed idea that does the work. Mr Stanley Redgrove quotes an illustration from J. G. Fraser s Psyche s Task: In illustration of the real power of the imagination, we may instance the Maori superstition of the Taboo. According to the Maoris, any one who touches a tabooed object will assuredly die, the tabooed object being a sort of anti-talisman. Professor Frazer says: Cases have been known of Maoris dying of sheer fright on learning that they had unwittingly eaten the remains of a chiet s dinner, or handled something that belonged to him, since such objects were ipso facto tabooed. He gives the following case on good authority: A woman, having partaken of some fine peaches from a basket, was told that they had come from a tabooed place. Immediately the basket dropped from her hands and she cried out in agony that the atua or godhead of the chief, whose divinity had been thus profaned, would kill her. That happened in the afternoon, and next day by twelve o clock she was dead. For us the power of the taboo does not exist; for the Maori, who implicitly believes in it, it is a very potent reality, but this power of the taboo resides, not in the external objects, but in his own mind. Very true. And the power of the vampire is the power of the idea. (6) ROBIN REDBREAST. Birds have always figured conspicuousjy in pagan superstitions, and it is possible that the superstitions which still linger among us, in some places at least, with regard to certain English birds, may be an echo of the older variety. Robins are held in high esteem by most people, except gardeners and farmers, an esteem which is partly accounted for by their coloured breasts and partly by the song-powers of the male bird. Probably, too, this esteem arises out of the old time superstition referred to in ancient ballads, beginning with The Babes in the Wood. Percy says: No burial this pretty pair Of any man receives, Till Robin Redbreast painfully, Did cover them with leaves. From this fancy seems to have grown the notion that it is unlucky to kill or keep a robin, and this is alluded to in the following lines of an eighteenth century poet, which occur in an ode to the Robin: For ever from his threshold fly, Who, void of honour, once shall try, With base inhospitable breast, To bar the freedom of his guest; O rather seek the peasant s shed, For he will give thee wasted bread, And fear some new calamity, Should any there spread snares for thee. J. H. Pott s Poems, 1780.

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