# Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.
PORTENTS AND AUGURIES.
F portents and auguries we find large mention made in the Wilkie MS. The number of trifling circumstances held to presage good or evil is really astonishing. Thus, it is fortunate for the housewife if a brood of chickens turn out all cock birds; very fortunate if her cabbages grow double, i.e. with two shoots from one root; or “lucker,” that is, with the leaves open instead of closing into a “stock” or heart; fortunate, too, if she meet with potatoes, gooseberries, &c. of an unusual shape, or with peas and beans more than the usual number in the pod; nine is the lucky number in Sussex. A pod containing only one pea is equally auspicious, and so is a four-leaved clover or an even ash-leaf. Witness the following lines from a privately-printed collection of North Country Folk-Lore:
The even ash-leaf in my left hand, The first man I meet shall be my husband. The even ash-leaf in my glove, The first I meet shall be my love. The even ash-leaf in my breast, The first man I meet’s whom I love best. The even ash-leaf in my hand, The first I meet shall be my man. ​Even ash, even ash, I pluck thee, This night my true love for to see; Neither in his rick nor in his rear, But in the clothes he does every day wear. Find even ash or four-leaved clover, An’ you’ll see your true love before the day’s over.
A spider descending upon you from the roof is a token that you will soon have a legacy from a friend. Fuller, in his “Worthies,” refers to this belief: “When a spider is found upon our clothes, we use to say, some money is coming towards us. The moral is this. Those who imitate the industry of that contemptible creature may, by God’s blessing, weave themselves into wealth, and procure themselves a plentiful estate.” In Ireland the saying is as follows: If a spider be found running over the dress or shawl of a woman the garment will soon be replaced by a new one.
On the other hand, the sudden loss of hair is a prognostic of the loss of children, health, or property. He who hears a loud stroke upon the table, as if by a wand or club, or three successive strokes, or the noise as of a bullet dropped upon the table, is a doomed man himself, or will soon hear of the death of a friend. Or, again, if a man dream that his teeth fall out, he will hear next day of the death of a friend, while a dream of fire prognosticates sorrow and pain. If you dream of a wedding you will hear of a death; if you dream of water you will hear of sickness.
A list of little superstitions of the same kind, still extant in the county of Durham, has been supplied to me by a careful observer.
Put on your left stocking inside out, it is lucky. Put on the right one so, it is unlucky. A bright spark in the candle betokens the coming of a letter; if it drops on the first shake, the letter is already in the post. If you find your friend burning three candles you may hail him Lord Mayor of London next year. In Germany, on the other hand, they say if there are three candles alight in the room one of the party must be a bride, i.e. a betrothed maiden.
​It is counted lucky to carry in the pocket a crooked sixpence, or one with a hole in it, or the tip of a dried tongue. People with meeting eyebrows are thought fortunate fellows. It is lucky to set a hen on an odd number of eggs; set her on even ones, and you will have no chickens. Again, if two persons wash their hands together in the same basin, they will be sure to fall out before bed-time. This is said all England over. A lady informs me that the belief held its ground when she was at school, and that it was necessary to avert the evil omen by “crossing the water” with the forefinger. I have seen this done by a farmer’s daughter in Devonshire. If a person’s hair burn brightly when thrown into the fire it is a sign of longevity; the brighter the flame the longer the life. On the other hand, if it smoulder away, and refuse to burn, it is a sign of approaching death. Among the lower orders in Ireland however it is held that human hair should never be burnt, only buried, because at the resurrection the former owner of the hair will come to seek it. Neither should it be thrown carelessly away lest some bird should find it and carry it off, causing the owner’s head to ache all the time the bird was busy working the hair into its nest. “I knew how it would be,” exclaimed a Sussex servant one day to her mistress, “when I saw that bird fly off with a bit of my hair in its beak, that flew out of the window this morning while I was dressing. I knew I should have a clapping headache, and so I have.” If the nose itches it is a sign that you will be crossed, or vexed, or kissed by a fool; if the foot, it foretells that you will soon tread on strange ground. Itching of the right hand portends receiving ​money; of the left hand, paying money; of the ear, hearing sudden news. If the right ear tingles, you are being spoken well of; if the left ear, some one is speaking ill of you. If you shiver, some one is walking over your future grave. If you find an ashleaf with an equal number of indentures on each side, you will meet a person of the same name with that of your future husband or wife. If you stumble upstairs (by accident) you will be married the same year; if you snuff out the candle you certainly will. So at least says one of my friends. Another professor of Folk-Lore informs me that both accidents are very unlucky, and who shall decide when doctors disagree? If you sing before breakfast you will cry before supper. If you put a button or hook into the wrong hole while dressing in the morning, some misfortune will occur during the day. A mole at the back of the neck marks out the bearer of it as in danger of hanging. The little white specks sometimes seen on the nails of the human hand are thus interpreted:—
On the thumb they presage gifts.
On the first finger they presage friends.
On the second finger they presage foes.
On the third finger they presage lovers to the young, else letters.
On the fourth finger they presage approaching journeys.
These are Durham sayings, but many of them are much wider in their range. The same may be said of the following, which were communicated by a friend at Leeds:—
If a snake crosses the path, it will rain.
If glowworms shine at night, it will soon rain.
Spring has not arrived till you can set your foot on twelve daisies.
March search, April try, May will prove if you live or die.
If you take violets or primroses to a house in less quantity than a handful, all the owner’s young chickens or ducks will die.
Before you kill anything it is necessary to wash your face.
​Eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and grey peas on Ash Wednesday, and you will have money in your pocket all the year round.
If you want to have extra good luck to your dairy, give your bunch of mistletoe to the first cow that calves after New Year’s Day.
Turn the money in your pocket on the first sight of the new moon, and you will always have plenty there. Should your pocket be empty you can only avert the lady moon’s displeasure by turning head over heels immediately.
Again, look at the first new moon of the year through a silk handkerchief which has never been washed. As many moons as you see through the handkerchief (the threads multiplying the vision), so many years will pass ere you are married. But it is very unlucky to see the new moon through a window-pane. A friend tells me she has known a maidservant shut her eyes when closing the shutters unless she should unexpectedly catch sight of it through the glass.
Throughout Northumberland this couplet is said and believed in:
A Saturday’s moon and a Sunday’s prime Never brought good in any man’s time.
Again, courtesy to the moon when first you see her after the change, and you will get a present before the moon is out. It must be done three times, and not through glass. This last is a Durham superstition. A Yorkshire lady informs me that in her childhood she was accustomed to repeat the following lines while looking at the first new moon of the year through a silk handkerchief:
New moon, new moon, I hail thee, New moon, new moon, be kind to me, If I marry man or man marry me, Show me how many moons it will be.
Another variation of the practice runs thus: “At the first appearance of the first new moon of the year go out in the ​evening, and, standing over the spars of a gate or stile, and looking on the moon, repeat the following lines:
All hail to thee moon, all hail to thee, I prythee, good moon, reveal to me This night who my husband shall be.
You will dream that night of your future husband.” This rite is practised too in Sussex, where they say also that if you can catch a falling leaf you will have twelve months of happiness.
A Yorkshire rhyme avers—
The new moon’s mist Is better than gold in a kist,
but does not specify wherefore.
Mr. Denham tells us that he once saw an old matron turn her apron to the new moon to insure good luck for the ensuing month. I may, perhaps, mention here, that apples are said to “shrump up” in Devonshire if picked when the moon is waning.
The May new moon is said in the South of England to have a share in curing scrofulous complaints. I have been told of a man residing near Chichester who has twice travelled into Dorsetshire with different members of his family to place them under a “cunning man” there. His charms were only potent in the month of May. And he required his patients to have their eyes fixed upon the new May moon while they received from his hands boxes of ointment made from herbs gathered when the moon was full. On the man’s last visit he found more than 200 persons waiting to be charmed, who had sat up for several hours for fear of missing the right moment for looking at her.
A certain unluckiness is held all England over to attend a May kitten as well as a May baby. The latter will be sickly and difficult to rear; the former must be drowned without mercy; no good would come of rearing it; it would only bring snakes and slowworms into the house and never kill rat or mouse. Nay, it is averred that it would suck the breath of children and ​cause their death. On this point the Rev. Hugh Taylor writes: “My groom, a native of North Tyne, tells me no one would keep a May cat because it would lie on the children’s faces and suffocate them. He said there were many cases of children in that neighbeurhood having lost their lives from this cause. He himself has a cat they are obliged to watch. If it is left alone in the house for a few minutes it is found lying on the baby’s face. My housekeeper, a native of Chatton, in Northumberland, says that no one would keep a May cat because it sucks the breath of children and kills them, though indeed all cats seem to have this propensity. An instance occurred at Greenock on May 25 of the present year, when an infant of five months old, the child of a baker, was suffocated by a strange cat.”
To return to the Borders. A maiden can scarcely do a worse thing there than boil a dish-clout in her crock. She will be sure, in consequence, to lose all her lovers; or, in Scotch phrase, she would “boil all her lads awa.”
Thus in Durham, if you put milk in your tea before sugar, you lose your sweetheart.
If, on leaving your house, you see a black snail, seize it boldly by one of its horns and throw it over your left shoulder; you may then go on your way prosperously; but, if you fling it over your right shoulder, you will draw down ill-luck. This practice extends as far south as Lancashire. In Yorkshire it is unlucky to meet a white horse on leaving home; you must spit to avert misfortune.
Skir or kir-handed people, i.e. left-handed ones, are not safe for a traveller to meet on a Tuesday morning. On other days it is fortunate to meet them. Again, if you enter another man’s house with your “skir” foot foremost, you draw down evil on its inhabitants. If, therefore, you have carelessly done so, you must avert the mischief by going out, and making your entrance a second time with the right foot foremost. I conclude that this little superstition once held its ground in the South, for Dr. Johnson is said to have entertained it, and to have left a house and re-entered it right foot foremost, if on the first occasion he had planted his left foot on the threshold.
​If any person deemed auspicious meet a young tradesman who has just donned his apron, and say to him “Weel may ye brook (or dirty) your apron,” the young man will be sure to do well in life.
It is unlucky for a traveller on Monday morning to meet a man with “schloof,” or flat feet; but mischief may be averted by returning home, eating and drinking, and starting afresh on one’s way.
If meat shrinks in the pot, it presages a downfall in life; but, if it swells to a large size, the master of the house will be prosperous in his undertakings.
To sweep the dust out of your house by the front door is to sweep away the good fortune of your family; it must be swept inwards, and carried out in a basket or shovel, and then no harm will follow.
If a quill be thrown over the house, and caught in a basin on the other side, it will turn to a silver spoon.
It is unlucky, after one has started on a journey, to be recalled and told of something previously forgotten; but the spell may be broken by asking for meat and drink, and partaking of it. This done, the journey may be resumed without fear. This little bit of superstition, too, has crept southwards into England. A clergyman from Yorkshire tells me that his grandfather, though anything but a weak man, would never turn back when he had once started on an expedition; he has been known to stand on horseback at the end of his grounds, shouting to the house for something that he had forgotten, rather than turn back for it.
Thus, in Sweden, one must not turn round when going on any business, for fear it turn out ill, nor may one look back when setting out on a journey.
Akin to this is the belief that it is unlucky to watch anyone out of sight; if you do so you will never see that person again.
Many north-country people would not, on any account, lend another a pin. They will say, “You may take one, but, mind, I do not give it.” Akin to this is the objection, once ​universally felt, to giving a knife or other sharp implement; it would cut friendship or love. Thus Gay, in his Shepherd’s Week:
But woe is me! Such presents luckless prove, For knives, they tell me, always sever love.
I have heard in Durham of a schoolmaster who wished to reward one of his pupils with a knife, but dared not do so without receiving from the boy a penny, in order that the knife might be purchased, not given. This feeling extends to Denmark, if indeed the Danish settlers did not bring the belief into England. It was defied by a versifier of the last century (the Rev. Samuel Bishop, A.D. 1796), who presented a knife to his wife on her fifteenth wedding day, with a copy of verses so spirited and full of character that I cannot forbear transcribing them. They are taken from Locker’s Lyra Elegantiarum:
A knife, dear girl, cuts love, they say, Mere modish love perhaps it may; For any tool of any kind Can separate what was never joined; The knife that cuts our love in two Will have much tougher work to do— Must cut your softness, worth, and spirit, Down to the vulgar size of merit; To level yours with common taste Must cut a world of sense to waste; And from your single beauty’s store Clip what would dizen out a score. The selfsame blade from me must sever Sensation, judgment, sight—for ever! All memory of endearments past, All hope of comforts long to last, All that makes fourteen years with you A summer—and a short one too— All that affection feels and fears, When hours without you seem like years. Till that be done—and I’d as soon Believe this knife would clip the moon, Accept my present undeterred, And leave their proverbs to the herd. If in a kiss—delicious treat— Your lips acknowledge the receipt, ​Love, fond of such substantial fare, And proud to play the glutton there, All thoughts of cutting will disdain, Save only—“cut and come again.”
In the West Riding of Yorkshire it is thought sinful to burn evergreens which have been used for decorations; or, again, to point at the stars, or try to count them. Many, they say, have been struck dead for so doing. I believe that this idea extends to Durham. Neither must you collect hailstones. The impropriety of this is said to be shown thus—if you put them into a wine glass to melt, they will run through it, and make a slop underneath!
No one in the Borders will put on a new coat or dress without placing some money at once in the right-hand pocket. This insures the pocket being always full; but if, by mistake, it is put in the left-hand pocket, you will never have a penny so long as you wear the coat.
My native county supplies many conventional speeches proper to be made on first seeing one’s friends in new clothes, i.e., “There you go, and well you look.” “May you have health to wear it, strength to tear it, and money to buy another.” Those in use in our schools are less kindly in their character, especially as they are accompanied with actions to correspond:
A nip for new, A bite for blue.
or,
A nip for new, Two for blue; Sixteen For bottle green.
Among country people in Lancashire it is considered unfortunate to buy cattle without receiving back some small coin from the purchase-money “for luck.” A farmer of fourscore years old told a friend that in early life he once bought a cow without thus receiving a gift from the purchase-money, but the animal was soon afterwards found dead in the field. During the ​remainder of his life, more than fifty years, he had taken care never to buy a cow or any other animal without seeing to the “gift again.”
When you see the first lamb in the spring, note whether its head or tail is turned towards you. If the former, you will have plenty of meat to eat during the year; if the latter, look for nothing beyond milk and vegetables. As far south as Lancashire it is thought lucky to see the first lamb’s head, and unlucky to see its tail.
It is reckoned unlucky in Lincolnshire to be bitten by a fox. A man at Barnoldby-le-beck fled lately from two foxes, alleging, by way of excuse, “You know, Sir, that if a man is bitten by a fox, he is sure to die within seven years.”
As to the spilling of salt, it is considered ominous in the North as elsewhere; the ill-luck can only be averted by throwing a pinch of it over the left shoulder; and he whose misplaced courtesy should lead him to offer to place salt on the plate of a northern, would probably be repelled with the words:
Help me to salt, Help me to sorrow!
The ill luck may, however, be averted by a second help. It is thought unlucky through the North to turn a loaf upside down after helping oneself from it. Along the coast, they say, that for every loaf so turned a ship will be wrecked. If a loaf parts in the hand while you are cutting it, it bodes dissension in the family: you part man and wife.
In Aberdeenshire it is believed that whosoever pulls the first stone out of a church, although it is for a good purpose, and to make way for a new one, will come to a violent end. My informant, a clergyman of the Church in Scotland, knew a case in which no workman had courage to begin, although the new place of worship had been built. The agent of the estate pulled out the first stone, and after that the labourers proceeded without further demur. In the same place there was great difficulty in ​bringing the new churchyard into use. No one would be the first to bury his dead there, for it was believed that the first corpse laid there was a teind to the Evil One. At last a poor tramp who was found dead in the road was interred, after which there was no further difficulty. Precisely the same superstition exists in Devonshire. The churchyard round St. John’s church, Bovey Tracey, South Devon, was long unused, the country people declaring that the devil would seize the first body laid in it. At last a stranger was buried there, the servant of a visitor in the parish, after which interments began at once to take place.
In accordance with this belief, Mr. Baring Gould points out the following Yorkshire superstition: “It is said in that county that the first child baptized in a new font is sure to die—a reminiscence of the sacrifice which was used for the consecration of every dwelling and temple in heathen times, and of the pig or sheep killed and laid at the foundation of churches. When I was incumbent of Dalton a new church was built. A blacksmith in the village had seven daughters, after which a son was born, and he came to me a few days before the consecration of the new church to ask me to baptize his boy in the old temporary church and font. “Why, Joseph,” said I, “if you will only wait till Thursday the boy can be baptized in the new font on the opening of the new church.” “Thank you, Sir,” said the blacksmith, with a wriggle, “but you see it’s a lad, and we shu’d be sorry if he were to dee; na if t’had been a lass instead, why then you were welcome, for ’twouldn’t ha’ mattered a ha’penny. Lasses are ower mony and lads ower few wi’ us.”
On the site of an ancient monastery or hospital in Preston, tradition maintains that a church has sunk into the earth, and ​that the bells ring on Christmas Eve. This pretty legend may be compared with that of the bells of Bottreaux or Boscastle, on the north coast of Cornwall, which never reached that still “silent tower,” the vessel that was freighted with them foundering at sea. The bells are said to be rung in oceans’ caves by unseen hands, and the Cornish fisherman listens for their chimes on Sunday mornings.
Birds have always supplied numberless auguries. When rooks desert a rookery it foretells the downfall of the family on whose property it is. There is a Northumbrian saying, that the rooks deserted the rookery of Chipchase before the family of Reed left that place. On the other hand, the Wilkie MS. informs us, that, when rooks haunt a town or village, mortality is supposed to await its inhabitants, and if they feed in the street it shows a storm is near at hand.
The same authority tells us that it is a very good omen for swallows to take possession of a place, and build their nests around it; while it is unpropitious for them to forsake a place which they have once tenanted. Now the swallow, “God’s fowl,” the herald of spring, has been held a sacred bird by the whole Germanic race: it preserves the house on which it builds from fire and storms, and protects it from evil; while, in its turn, it is protected by the penalties which threaten the sacrilegious hand which should destroy it—the loss of dairy-produce, or continued rain for four weeks. In Yorkshire the punishment is not so defined, but it is considered certain to fall in one form or other. A farmer’s wife near Hull told a friend of mine, Mrs. L., how some young men, sons of a banker in that town, had pulled down all the swallows’ nests about a little farm which he possessed. “The bank broke soon after,” she went on, “and, poor things, the family have had nought but trouble since!” This belief crops out in Sussex too, where they say that misfortune is sure to follow the taking of a swallow’s nest, or killing a house cricket. In Perigord the swallow is the “messenger of life;” in some parts of France it shares with the wren the title of “poule de Dieu;” and among our own peasantry, those who say—
The robin and the wren Are God Almighty’s cock and hen; Him that harries their nest, Never shall his soul have rest,
add—
The martin and the swallow Are God Almighty’s bow and arrow;
or, as it runs in some of our midland counties,—
The martin and the swallow Are God Almighty’s birds to hollow.
The Lancashire version is—
The robin and wren Are God’s cock and hen. The spink and the sparrow Are the deil’s bow and arrow.
Archbishop Whately tells us, however, that in Ireland the swallow is called the “devil’s bird” by the vulgar, who hold that there is a certain hair on every one’s head, which if a swallow can pick off, the man is doomed to eternal perdition. In Scotland, on the other hand, the pretty little yellow-hammer is called the “devil’s bird,” and a superstitious dislike to it extends as far south as Northumberland. My friend the vicar of Stamfordham tells me that when the boys of his parish find its nest they destroy it, saying:
Half a paddock, half a toad, Half a drop of de’il’s blood. Horrid yellow yowling!
A cock crowing on the threshold or a humblebee entering a house are in Buckinghamshire deemed omens of a visitor. To turn the bee out is a most inhospitable action.
As to the robin redbreast, it is invested with a sacred character all Christendom over, though various reasons are assigned for it in different countries. In Brittany it is reverenced for an act of devotion to the Crucified Saviour, in extracting one thorn from ​His crown, thus dyeing its own breast red; in Wales for daily bearing in its bill one drop of water to the place of torment, in order to extinguish its flames.
The Breton legend has been thus versified by the Rev. J. H. Abrahall:
Bearing His cross, while Christ passed forth forlorn, His Godlike forehead by the mock crown torn, A little bird took from that crown one thorn.
To soothe the dear Redeemer’s throbbing head, That bird did all she could: His blood, ’tis said, Down dropping, dyed her tender bosom red.
Since then no wanton boy disturbs her nest, Weazel nor wild-cat will her young molest— All sacred deem that bird of ruddy breast.
Boys always respect its nest: they say in Cornwall,
Who hurts the robin or the wren Will never prosper, sea or land.
But the penalty attached to such sacrilege in Devonshire is peculiar. A little boy in the neighbourhood of Dartmoor was heard to say that if you took a robin’s nest all the “clomb” (i. e. crockery) in the house would break.
In Scotland, however, the song of the robin is thought to bode ill to the sick person who hears it, and a similar belief holds in Northamptonshire; where, indeed, the bird is counted a certain prophet of death, and is said to tap three times at the window of a dying person’s room. Thus, again, at St. John’s College, Hurstpierpoint, the boys maintain that when a death takes place a robin will enter the chapel, light upon the altar, and begin to sing.
The wren generally shares in the reverence paid to the robin; ​thus the two birds are named together in the Pastorals of George Smith, A.D. 1770:—
I found a robin’s nest within our shed, And in the barn a wren her young ones bred; I never take away their nest, nor try To catch the old ones, lest a friend should die: Dick took a wren’s nest from his cottage side, And ere a twelvemonth passed his mother died.
Nevertheless, at Christmas-tide boys are accustomed in Essex to kill wrens and carry them about in furze-bushes, from house to house, asking a present in these words:—
The wren, the wren, the king of the birds, St. Stephen’s Day was killed in the furze; Although he be little his honour is great, And so, good people, pray give us a treat.
It is remarkable that the custom extends to the Isle of Man, where the following verse is used:—
We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin, We hunted the wren for Jack of the Can; We hunted the wren for Robin the Bobbin, We hunted the wren for every one.
And after making a circuit, and collecting what money they can, the boys lay the wren on a bier and bury it. The same usage has prevailed in Ireland and in France; it is a singular one, and has been thus explained. The bird had a sacred character among our Celtic ancestors, as among the Greeks. It was a bearer of celestial fire, and disputed with the eagle the kingship of the feathered creation. Early Christian teachers opposed the superstitious respect paid to the little creature, and their lessons were singularly embodied in this cruel persecution.
The bawkie-bird, or bat, immortalised by Shakespear as “the delicate Ariel’s” steed, is in Scotland connected with witchcraft. ​“If,” says Mr. Wilkie, “the bat is observed, while flying, to rise, and then descend again earthwards, you may know that the witches’ hour is come—the hour in which they have power over every human being who is not specially shielded from their influence.”
The raven, crow, and magpie, are ominous birds on the Border, as elsewhere. A North-country servant thus accounted for the unluckiness of the magpie to her master, the late Canon Humble. “It was” the girl said, “the only bird which did not go into the Ark with Noah; it liked better to sit outside, jabbering over the drowned world.” A yet quainter reason was given for it by the Durham lad, who said the magpie was a hybrid between the raven and the dove, and therefore, unlike every other bird and beast, had not been baptized in the waters of the Deluge. Yet, uncanny as the creature is, and mischievous too, there are parts of the Continent where no one dares kill it. An English traveller in Sweden once saw a flock of magpies greedily devouring the pig’s food, and, having a gun with him, offered to shoot some. He did so, and the farmer thanked him. heartily, but expressed his hopes that no harm might befall him in consequence.
I received my first lesson respecting the portents to be drawn from magpies very early in life. Well do I remember, when a ​boy of ten or twelve years old, driving an old lady in a pony-carriage to visit a friend in a secluded part of the county of Durham. Half our journey was made when, without a word of warning, the reins were suddenly snatched out of my hand, and the pony brought to a stand. Full of astonishment, I looked to my companion for some explanation of this assault on my independence, and saw her gazing with intense interest on a magpie then crossing the road. After a pause of some seconds she exclaimed, with a sigh, “Oh, the nasty bird! Turn back, turn back!” And back we turned, the old lady instructing me on the way home in the following verse, which certainly justified the course we had taken:
One is sorrow, two mirth, Three a wedding, four a birth, Five heaven, six hell, Seven the de’il’s ain sell.
I have since heard another rendering of the last couplet—
Five a sickening, six a christening, Seven a dance, eight a lady going to France.
The first couplet, with some variations, is in universal use; but I think, on the whole, the magpie receives more notice in the North of England than elsewhere. One clerical friend informs me of a lady who pleads guilty to making a cross in the air when she sees a magpie crossing her path, by way of dispelling the ill-luck attending the bird; and another tells me how he himself invariably takes off his hat on catching sight of a single magpie, in the hope that by this polite attention he may avert the evil consequences attendant on the apparition. I have heard precisely the same thing of a man of education and good position in Yorkshire; and a lady of that county, Mrs. L——, tells me a curious instance of the good effects of attending to the magpie’s warning. It relates to a gentleman with whom she was well acquainted, a county magistrate and a landowner. One day, in the year 1825, he was riding to York with the view of depositing his rents in Challoner’s Bank, when a magpie flew ​across his path. He drew up his horse, paused a moment, and turned homewards, resolving to defer his journey till the next day. That day, however, the bank failed, and it only remained for the gentleman to congratulate himself on his prudent attention to the magpie’s warning. From another Yorkshire lady I have received the following verse, which she informs me she used to repeat as a child on seeing this bird, making at the same time the sign of the cross:
I cross the magpie, The magpie crosses me; Bad luck to the magpie, And good luck to me.
It is prudent also to look out at once for a crow, as the sight of that bird disperses the ill-luck which the magpie may have brought.
Now, all this is very curious when viewed in connection with ancient pagan mythology. Auguries drawn from the flight and action of birds formed a part of its complex system, from the days when Themistocles was assured of victory at Artemisium by the crowing of a cock, or Romulus claimed to be King of Rome from the appearance of vultures. The Greeks made a science of these auguries and their interpretation, and called it Ornithomancy. Is it not marvellous to find traces of such direct heathenism among even the upper classes of a country Christianised so many ages back? Eleven hundred years ago, efforts were made by doctors of the Church to root them out, but here they are still. We find Alcuin, who was born at York about A.D. 735, the friend of Charlemagne, and one of the glories of Anglo-Saxon times, writing thus to a bishop, evidently a Saxon one: “Prognostics also, and cries of birds, and sneezings, are altogether to be shunned, because they are of no force except to those who believe in them, so that it may happen unto them according to their faith. For it is permitted to the evil spirit, for the deceiving of persons who observe these things, to cause that in some degree prognostics should often foretell the truth.” In another place Alcuin defines augurs as “those who pay attention to prognostics, and to the flight and voice of birds.”
​But to proceed. We can scarcely be surprised that lonely walks among the wild hills and cheerless moors of the North should be attended by superstitious fears, or that the strange unearthly cries, so like the yelping of dogs, uttered by wild fowl on their passage southwards, should engender a belief in a pack of spectral hounds. Wordsworth speaks of it in a sonnet, evidently connecting it with the German legend of the Wild Huntsman. He tells of a peasant, poor and aged, yet endowed—
With ample sovereignty of eye and ear; Rich were his walks with supernatural cheer: He the seven birds hath seen that never part, Seen the seven whistlers on their nightly rounds, And counted them! And oftentimes will start, For overhead are sweeping Gabriel’s hounds, Doomed with their impious lord the flying hart To chase for ever on aërial grounds.
In Devonshire the spectral pack is called the “Wisht hounds,” a name which Mr. Kelly derives from Wodin’s name, Wunsch, corrupted into “wisht.” It has a huntsman there who guides his pack over the wild wastes of Dartmoor; but I cannot hear of such a being in my own neighbourhood. The Gabriel hounds, as they call them in Durham and some parts of Yorkshire, are described as monstrous human-headed dogs, who traverse the air, and are often heard though seldom seen. Sometimes they appear to hang over a house, and then death or calamity are sure to visit it. A Yorkshire friend informs me that when a child was burned to death in Sheffield, a few years ago, the neighbours immediately called to mind how the Gabriel hounds had passed above the house not long before. From another quarter I hear of a person who was hastily summoned one night to the sick-bed of a relative whose illness had suddenly assumed an alarming character. As he set out he heard the wild sound of the creatures above his head; they accompanied him the whole way, about a mile, then paused, and yelped loudly over the house. He entered it, and found that the patient had just breathed her last.
​In a letter from the late Mr. Holland, of Sheffield, dated March 28, 1861, is the following mention of this wild hunt, with a sonnet by him, embodying local feelings on the subject: “I can never forget the impression made upon my own mind when once arrested by the cry of these Gabriel hounds as I passed the parish church of Sheffield, one densely dark and very still night. The sound was exactly like the questing of a dozen beagles on the foot of a race, but not so loud, and highly suggestive of ideas of the supernatural.
“Oft have I heard my honoured mother say, How she has listened to the Gabriel hounds— Those strange unearthly and mysterious sounds, Which on the ear through murkiest darkness fell; And how, entranced by superstitious spell, The trembling villager not seldom heard, In the quaint notes of the nocturnal bird, Of death premonished, some sick neighbour’s knell. I, too, remember once at midnight dark, How these sky-yelpers startled me, and stirred My fancy so, I could have then averred A mimic pack of beagles low did bark. Nor wondered I that rustic fear should trace A spectral huntsman doomed to that long moonless chase.”
We have the authority of the distinguished ornithologist, Mr. Yarrell, for stating the birds in question to be bean-geese, coming southwards in large flocks on the approach of winter, partly from Scotland and its islands, but chiefly from Scandinavia. They choose dark nights for their migration, and utter a loud and very peculiar cry. It has been observed in every part of England—in Norfolk, in Gloucestershire, and as far west as Cornwall. A gentleman was riding alone near the Land’s End on a still dark night, when the yelping cry broke out above his head so suddenly, and to all appearance so near, that he instinctively pulled up his horse as if to allow the pack to pass, the animal trembling violently at the unexpected sounds.
Mr. Buckland has reported portents of a somewhat similar ​character on the English Channel. A rustling rushing sound is heard there on the dark still nights of winter, and is called the Herring Spear or Herring Piece by the fishermen of Dover and Folkestone. This is caused by the flight of those pretty little birds the redwings, as they cross the Channel on their Avay to warmer regions. The fishermen listen to the sound with awe, yet regard it on the whole as an omen of good success with their nets. But they deprecate the cry of the “Seven Whistlers” (named in the sonnet above quoted from Wordsworth), and consider it a death-warning. “I heard ’em one dark night last winter,” said an old Folkestone fisherman. “They come over our heads all of a sudden, singing ‘ewe, ewe,’ and the men in the boat wanted to go back. It came on to rain and blow soon afterwards, and was an awful night, Sir; and sure enough before morning a boat was upset, and seven poor fellows drowned. I know what makes the noise, Sir; its them long-billed curlews, but I never likes to hear them.”
But to return to the Gabriel hounds. In the neighbourhood of Leeds the phenomenon assumes another name and another character. It is there called “Gabble retchet,” and held to be the souls of unbaptized children doomed to flit restlessly around their parents’ abode. Now it is a widespread belief that such children have no rest after death. In North Germany they are said to be turned into the meteors called Will-o’-the-wisp, and so to flit about and hover between heaven and earth. In Scotland, unbaptized infants are supposed to wander in woods and solitudes lamenting their hard fate, and I know that a few years back, at Chudleigh, in Devonshire, a servant in the clergyman’s family asked her mistress whether what the people of the place said was really true, about the souls of unchristened babies wandering in the air till the Judgment Day. And it is very remarkable that German Folk-Lore connects unbaptized infants with the Furious Host or wild hunt, which is evidently the same as the Gabriel hounds of the North and the Wisht hounds of the West of England. The mysterious lady Frau Bertha is ever attended by troops of unbaptized children, and she takes them with her when she joins the wild huntsman, and sweeps with him and his wild pack ​across the wintry sky. In North Devon the local name is “Yeth hounds,” heath and heathen being both “Yeth” in the North Devon dialect. Unbaptized infants are there buried in a part of the churchyard set apart for the purpose called “Chrycimers,” i. e. Christianless hill, and the belief seems to be that their spirits, having no admittance into Paradise, unite in a pack of “Heathen” or “Yeth” hounds, and hunt the Evil one, to whom they ascribe their unhappy condition.
Mr. Baring-Gould heard of this hunt in Iceland from his guide, Jón, under the name of the Yule host; and in his Iceland, its Scenes and Sagas, pp. 199-203, he gives so lucid an account of the myth that I am thankful, by his kind permission and that of his publishers, Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co., to insert it in these pages. My readers will observe that he lays all the rout to the charge of the wind, not of the bean-geese; and certainly a winter wind would account for any amount of confusion and turmoil, especially on the wild moors and hills of the North. Still I do think that some of the wild stories and superstitions point to the birds in question as their originators, at least in part:—
“Odin, or Wodin, is the wild huntsman who nightly tears on his white horse over the German and Norwegian forests and moor-sweeps, with his legion of hellhounds. Some luckless woodcutter, on a still night, is returning through the pinewoods; the air is sweet-scented with matchless pine fragrance. Overhead the sky is covered with grey vapour, but a mist is on all the land; not a sound among the fir-tops; and the man starts at the click of a falling cone. Suddenly his ear catches a distant wail: a moan rolls through the interlacing branches: nearer and nearer comes the sound. There is the winding of a long horn waxing louder and louder, the baying of hounds, the rattle of hoofs and paws on the pine-tree tops. A blast of wind rolls along, the firs bend as withes, and the woodcutter sees the wild huntsman and his rout reeling by in frantic haste.
“The wild huntsman chases the wood spirits, and he is to be seen at cockcrow, returning with the little Dryads hanging to his saddlebow by their yellow locks. This chase goes by ​different names. The huntsman in parts of Germany is still called Wôde, and the chase after him Wüthendes Heer. In Danzig the huntsman is Dyterbjernat, i. e. Diedrick of Bern, the same as Theodoric the Great. In Schleswig he is Duke Abel, who slew his brother in 1250. In Normandy, in the Pyrenees, and in Scotland, King Arthur rides nightly through the land. In the Franche Comté he is Herod in pursuit of the Holy Innocents. In Norway the hunt is called the Aaskarreya, the chase of the inhabitants of Asgarth. (Hence perhaps our word skurry.) In Sweden it is Odin’s hunt. This is the Netherlands account of it: In the neighbourhood of the Castle of Wynedal there dwelt, a long time ago, an aged peasant, who had a son that was entirely devoted to the chase. When the old peasant lay on his deathbed, he had his son called to him, for the purpose of giving him a last Christian exhortation. He came not, but whistling to his dogs went out into the thicket. At this the old man was struck with despair, and he cursed his son with the appalling words: ‘Hunt, then, for ever!—ay, for ever!’ He then turned his head and fell asleep in Christ. From that time the unhappy son has wandered restless about the woods, and the whole neighbourhood re-echoes with the voice of the huntsman and the baying of dogs.
“In Thuringia and elsewhere it is Hakelnberg, or Hackelnbärend, who thus rides, and this is the reason:
“Hakelnberg was a knight, passionately fond of the chase. On his deathbed he would not listen to the priest, nor hearken to his mention of heaven. ‘I care not for heaven,’ growled he, ‘I care only for the hunt!’ ‘Then hunt until the last day!’ exclaimed the priest. And now, through storm and rain, the wild huntsman fleets. A faint barking or yelping in the air announces his approach, a screechowl flies before him, called by the people Tutösel. Wanderers who fall in his way throw themselves on their faces, and let him ride over them.
“Near Fontainebleau, Hugh Capet is believed to ride; at Blois, the hunt is called the Chasse Macabée.
“Children who die unbaptized often join the rout. Once two ​children in the Bern Oberland were on a moor together; one slept, the other was awake; suddenly the wild hunt swept by, a voice called, ‘Shall we wake the child?’ ‘No!’ answered a second voice, ‘it will be with us soon.’ The sleeping child died that night. Gervaise of Tilbury says, that in the thirteenth century, by full moon towards evening, the wild hunt was frequently seen in England traversing forest and down. In the twelfth century it was called in England the Herlething; it appeared in the reign of Henry II. and was witnessed by many. The banks of the Wye were the scene of the most frequent chases; at the head of the troop rode the, ancient British Herla.
“King Herla had once been to the marriage-feast of a dwarf who lived in a mountain. As he left the bridal hall, the host presented him with horses, dogs, and hunting gear; also with a bloodhound, which was set on the saddlebow before the king, and the troop was bidden not to get off their horses till the dog leaped down.
“On returning to his palace, the king learned that he had been absent for two hundred years, which had passed as one night, whilst he was in the mountain with the dwarf. Some of the retainers jumped off their horses and fell to dust, but the king and the rest ride on till the bloodhound bounds from the saddle, which will be at the Last Day.
“In many parts of France the huntsman is called Harlequin, or Henequin; and I cannot but think that the Italian Harlequin on the stage, who has become a necessary personage in our Christmas pantomime, is the wild huntsman. It is worth observing that the Yule or Christmas, the season of pantomimes, is the time when the wild huntsman rides, and his host is often called the Yule troop.
“I have said that the wild huntsman rides in the woods of Fontainebleau. He is known to have blown his horn loudly, and rushed over the palace with all his hounds, before the assassination of Henry IV.
“On Dartmoor, in Devonshire, the same chase continues; it is called the Wisht hunt, and there are people now living who have witnessed it.
​“Now for the names, Wôd, Herod, Hackelnbärend, &c. Perhaps Icelandic will help us to explain the myth. Wôd is evidently Woden; the name is derived from the preterite of a verb, signifying to rage:—
| | Infinitive. | Perfect. | Hence the Names. |
| Icelandic | Vatha | Oth | Othr, Othinn |
| Old High German | Watan | Wuot | Wuotan, Wodin |
| Old Saxon | Wadan | Wôd | Wôd, Wôdan |
“Hackelnbärend is the Icelandic Hekluberandi, the mantle-bearer; Herod is derived from Her-rauthi, the red lord. This name is known in the north (Hernath’s Saga, Kormak Saga and Fornmana Sögur, ii. 259). But Dr. Mannhardt derives the name from Hrôths, rumour, fame. The name of Chasse Macabée is given from the allusion to it in the Bible (2 Maccabees, v. 2-4). ‘Then it happened, that through all the city, for the space almost of forty days, there were seen horsemen running in the air, in cloth of gold, and armed with lances, like a band of soldiers. And troops of horsemen in array, encountering and running one against another, with shaking of shields, and multitudes of pikes, and drawing of swords, and casting of darts, and glittering of golden ornaments, and harness of all sorts, Wherefore every man prayed that that apparition might turn to good.’
“When men began to name the different operations of nature, they called the storm, from its vehemence, its rage, ‘the raging ’—Wuothan, Wôden; or from its coming at regular times, tempestus; or from its outpourings λαῑλαψ (cogn. λαπάζω, λαπασσω, λάπτω); or again from its breathing, storm (styrma, Icelandic, to puff; sturmen, Teut., to make a noise; thus, Gisah trumbaro inti meniga, sturmenta, Schilt, Thesaur., sub voce—Christ saw the musicians and the multitude making a noise); our word gale comes from its whistling and singing—the root is also preserved in nightingale, the night-singer (gala, Icel. cogn. yell), and from this Odin (the storm) got his name of Galdnir, or Göldnir, and Christmastide was hight Yule; or from its gushing forth like a flood we get the word gust (Icel. geysa and gjósa); or, once more, from the storm cloaking the sky, covering the fair blue with a mantle of cloud, it got its name of Procella (cogn. ​celo, προκαλύπτω), I screen with a cloak); and so we find the wild huntsman, who, you see, is the storm, called Hackelnbärend, from Hekluberandi, the cloak-hearer.
“Now, in the first ages, there was no intention whatever of making the raging storm into a god, nor expressing a divine act in saying that the storm chased the sere leaves; yet, by degrees, the epithet Wôden was given form and figure, and became personified as a deity; then, too, the idea of the storm chasing the leaves became perverted into a myth representing Wôden as pursuing the yellow-haired wood-nymphs.”
But to return to auguries and portents. The mention of sneezings in the passage quoted in page 128 from Alcuin is remarkable, for here again a very early superstition holds its ground in the nineteenth century. Nurses in Durham, not to say mothers, still invoke a blessing on children when they sneeze; indeed, some extend the practice to adults. In Germany such is certainly the case. A young cousin of mine, lately at school in the Duchy of Wurtemburg, was greatly astonished to find that a fit of sneezing in which one of the professors indulged was responded to by a cry from all the pupils of “Gesundheit,” or “good health;” an attention which he seemed to expect as much as the Emperor Tiberius, who was extremely particular in requiring it from his courtiers. The practice comes from early pagan days. The ancient Greeks, in observing it, claimed to follow the example of Prometheus, who stole celestial fire to animate the beautiful figure he had made of clay; as the fire permeated its frame, the newly-formed creature sneezed, and the delighted Prometheus invoked blessings on it. At any rate the custom was of long standing in Aristotle’s days. St. Chrysostom names sneezing among other things of which people made a sign, and St. Eligius warns his flock to take no notice of it. It has, however, been noticed, and good wishes have been uttered on the occasion far and near, in Christendom and heathendom alike—in the remotest parts of Africa, and as far east as Siam. Clarke, ​in his Travels, refers to the usage as common in Scandinavia; and in the year 1542, when Hernando de Soto, the famous conquistador of Florida, had an interview with the Cacique Guachoya, the following curious incident occurred. In the midst of their conversation the Cacique happened to sneeze; upon this, all his attendants bowed their heads, opened and closed their arms, and making their signs of veneration, saluted their prince with various phrases of the same purport: “May the sun guard you!” “May the sun be with you!” “May the sun shine upon you, defend you, prosper you!” and the like.
I will close this chapter with a verse on sneezing, which is current in Buckinghamshire to this day:—
Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for danger, Sneeze on Tuesday, kiss a stranger, Sneeze on Wednesday, get a letter, Sneeze on Thursday, something better, Sneeze on Friday, sneeze for sorrow, Saturday, see your true-love to-morrow.
* ↑ This is curious, since in Icelandic sagas a man with meeting eyebrows is said to he hamrammr, or a kveldulfr, that is, a werewolf. Thus, Olaf Tvennubruni is spoken of in the Landnama, v. c. 10, as hamrammr, i. e. able to change his shape. His nickname signifies one with drooping brows, but in later Icelandic Folk-Lore the eyebrows growing over the nose is a token of a man being a werewolf. The same idea holds in Denmark (Thiele’s Danmarks Folke Sagn, vol. ii. p. 279), also in Germany (Simrock’s Deutsche Sagen, p. 467), whilst in Greece it is a sign that a man is a brukolak, or vampire.—S. B. G.
* ↑ It is deemed a sign of longevity in Devonshire if the hair grows down on the forehead and retreats up the head above the temples.
* ↑ Communicated by the Rev. M. G. Watkins
* ↑ Thus, in Germany it is said that the first person who enters a new church becomes the property of the devil. At Aix-la-Chapelle is shown a rent in the door, which is thus accounted for. The church was ready for consecration, and before anyone entered it a dog was driven in. The devil in a rage seized the dog, and flew away with it, shivering the door. In various parts of Germany and in Norway a dog or a pig was buried in the churchyard as an offering to the devil. He is thus outwitted, and receives a beast instead of a man as his tribute.—S. B. G.
* ↑ Singularly enough, I saw this happen myself on one occasion. I happened to be in the chapel one evening at six o’clock, when a robin entered at the open circular east window in the temporary apse, and lighting on the altar began to chirp. A few minutes later the passing bell began to toll for a boy who had just died.—S. B. G.
* ↑ See Kelly’s Indo-European Tradition, pp. 75-82
* ↑ In Sweden the ravens which scream by night in forest swamps and wild moors are held to be the ghosts of murdered men, whose bodies have been hidden in those spots by their undetected murderers, and not had Christian burial. In Denmark the night raven is considered an exorcised spirit. There is a hole in its left wing, caused by the stake driven into the earth where a spirit has been exorcised. One must take care not to look up when the bird is flying overhead, for he who sees through the hole in its wing will become a night raven himself, and the night raven will be released. It is ever flying towards the east, in hopes of reaching the Holy Sepulchre, for when it arrives there it will get rest.—S. B. G.
* ↑ The magpie is considered in Sweden a downright witches’ bird, belonging to the Evil One and the other powers of night. When the witches on Walpurgis night ride to the Blakulli, they go in the form of magpies. These birds moult in summer, and become bald about the neck; and then the countrypeople say they have been to the Blakulli and helped the Evil One to get his hay in, and that the yoke has rubbed their feathers off.—Thorpe’s Mythology, vol. ii. p. 84.
* ↑ Archbishop Whately’s Remains, p. 270.
* ↑ Notes and Queries, vol. v. p. 596.
* ↑ Curiosities of Natural History, second series, p. 285.
* ↑ The German word wuth is cognate with the name Odin. Our old English word “wood,” equivalent to mad, is similarly related.
* ↑ It is remarkable that in the account of the raising of the Shunammite’s son by Elijah the lad is said to have given his first signs of renewed vitality by sneezing seven times.—S. B. G
* ↑ Theodore Irving’s Conquest of Florida, quoted in Notes and Queries, vol. v. p. 394.