Lucky Underpants and Other Musings

by Esmerelda Weatherwax (July 2007) 

 
I’ll set my stall out – this is a light-hearted article. Yes I know that GK Chesterton said “When men and women cease to believe in God, they do not believe in nothing. They believe in anything”.  
 
For footballers this is the syndrome of the lucky underpants/boots/left sock.
 
I’m not at all superstitious which may be because of faith. Of course the evangelical atheists that are so vocal these days would say I subscribe to the biggest superstition of all but, as I said, this is not going to be the place to discuss anything serious for once.
I have had a busy month, and I’m looking forward to my birthday, which this year is a Friday the 13^th and so I fell to pondering on bits of odd folklore and the idiosyncrasies of people I have known.
The 13^th business has never bothered me; if anything my birthday has given me a very good reason to like 13.
 
My heavy smoking cousin is very particular about not giving or receiving the third light off a match. This is said to have originated in the trenches of World War I. The sniper noticed the first cigarette, took aim while the second was being lit and fired at the third. Leaving aside how stupid it would be to smoke in a gang with heads above the parapet I have been told that this story was put about by a match manufacturer who wanted to boost sales. Why sell one match when you could sell two?
 
It is supposed to be bad luck to let milk boil over. Of course it is, boiled milk is one of the messiest things to have to clean off a cooker. Unless you are at a Hindu wedding, when the groom’s mother will show the bride a pan of over boiling milk to symbolize her hope that the bride’s life will always be overflowing with good things and plenty. Which is a much nicer sentiment to contemplate while you scrub the radiant rings.
Ditto breaking mirrors – all those glass shards are the devil to clear up.
 
Will the folklore books and the regions of the UK please make their minds up about horseshoes please. We know they are lucky. They are good for the horse.
But when the horse has finished with the shoe should it be nailed with the points upwards, thus making a swing for a witch, or with the points downwards, so that the luck falls out? And then the witch having nowhere to sit curses you, such that the lucky horseshoe falls off the nail and hits you on the head.
I go with points up, to keep on the right side of your stable witch. Besides if you leave your breakfast boiled egg shell intact she might use it as a boat and sail away in it and leave you in peace.
 
Cats are lucky. It doesn’t matter what colour they are, any cat I have ever owned is the luckiest creature on earth to have found a mug like me.
 
A school friend always said “Rub on brass, sure to come to pass”.  She insisted on rubbing our college application forms on the brass plate of the post box. Those were the days of proper Post Offices with brass plates outside. It did indeed come to pass, for both of us – whether it was good luck or bad that she ended up a teacher and I ended up here I don’t know.
 
My mother was the source of a couple of superstitions which, while I know they will not bring doom and disaster down upon me, I don’t do.
 
I will not mend a garment while I am wearing it. I believe this is of Jewish origin from the tailoring trade and may be something to do with the idea of being sewn into a shroud. Whatever, if the button falls off my blouse, even if I am in a hurry to go out I take it off to sew the button back on. Unless I am being really lazy then I replace the button with a safety pin as I run out the door. Then I lose the button and life gets complicated because I no longer have a haberdasher in walking distance. 
 
The other thing I can’t do is put shoes on the table. I believe that in the US the superstition is to never put a hat on the bed. I can do that. According to the folklore books shoes on the table may be symbolic of hanging, or it may threaten redundancy. Its not fear of dirt because if I come in with shopping I can dump it all on the kitchen table while I put the kettle on, unless I have bought shoes. New shoes, especially children’s shoes, unworn and in a box, are going to be a lot cleaner than the bag of potatoes or potted plant which I can place on the table quite happily. It just shrieks WRONG.
 
There are two superstitions which I have never come across apart from the two people (and the families they learnt it from) who insisted upon them.
One was another school friend. Whenever we did the irritating kids trick of blowing up our crisp packet or paper bag and banging it between our hands to make a satisfying noise she would say gloomily “You have just banged a relative out of a job” Even at the age of 15 she took great delight in the dire consequences.
 
The other was an old lady who knew my father before he died. She was aghast to find that my mother had kept some of my hair after a childhood haircut and that it was still in the sideboard drawer.
“No wonder your poor mother died so young” she said to me. “And your poor father is so ill now, and you are in so much trouble. (I won’t bore you, its old history). Whatever was your Mother thinking of? Throw it away at once”
And the next time she saw me I had to lie to her that I had thrown it away. Where that superstition came from I cannot imagine, poor girls and wig making perhaps.
If anybody has come across either of these superstitions I would be interested to hear where and what the origin might be.
 
When I prepare sprouts I take off the outer leaves, trim the stalk then cut a cross in the base. I believe that a slit ensures that the inside of the sprout cooks thoroughly. One cut would suffice.
Do I really believe that sprouts need exorcising? No.
I just do it because that’s how my mother did them.
Now sweetcorn does need excommunication, being a foodstuff fit only for ground bait.
 
I have a ritual every New Years Eve which started with my Dad. He would open the front door to let the New Year in, open the back door to let the Old Year out, then we would both go into the garden to listen to the boats on the River Thames let off their sirens in celebration. The sound carried quite a distance. These days there are very few boats on the river to let off sirens and even if there were the sound of fireworks which get more popular every year would drown them out. But after I have opened the doors I still listen for them in my head. I have listened in my head to Thames boats on New Years Eve in Manchester and Devon.
 
Magpies? Three for a girl, four for a boy, five for silver, six for gold? There were so many living in the woods near my home a couple of years ago it was more like nineteen for Carbon and Alloy Steel Metallurgy. There are still a lot of birds about but they have competition this last two years from the rooks.
Crows portend misfortune, rooks mean prosperity.
So these are rooks.
They better be rooks.
I know, its only rook and roll but I like it.
 

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