The Sunny Side of Superstition

OUR family confesses itself to be one of those in which superstition is not quite extinct. The male members were long since emancipated, but on the distaff side there is a hyperæsthesia in regard to Fridays. Attempts to explode Friday’s bad luck have not succeeded very well among us. The last was made but two years ago, and at a most imprudent time; for it was but a few weeks before a wedding of great family importance that two of us so far forgot ourselves as to go away to pay a visit on a Friday. The visit began pleasantly. It was with old and hospitable friends. A cosy and confidential cup of tea was followed by a very cheerful dinner and an absorbing game of whist. Not until morning did consequences appear in the voice of one of us calling, “I think I’ve got the mumps.”

Reader, I recovered in time, but it was as a brand snatched from the burning. Friday appears to me a sort of hiatus in the week. To save a life I would cut out a garment on that day, but not to oblige a friend. The time may come when our entire kindred will cast off the shackles of Friday, as we once did of thirteen at table. We have been seen to wear an opal brooch or ring, though none of us were born in July. We pass on stairways, and cut street corners. In fact, one reason for sticking to Friday is that we think it only consistent to preserve one superstition of bad luck, when we cherish so many on the sunny side.

That there is anything genial, cheering, or therapeutically valuable about superstition may seem a tall statement. The adjective generally associated with it is “dark.” On the contrary, there is something very brightening about a four-leaved clover. Who is not a little more of an optimist for picking up a horse-shoe? What lonely farmer’s wife, storm-bound on a winter afternoon, with unwelcome leisure on her hands, but feels a little quickening of the pulse as she drops her scissors and beholds them sticking up in the carpet? — or discovers that she has laid an extra place at the table? Company-signs are the commonest and welcomest of all superstitions. The scissors — the needle — the dishcloth — the fork — the Saturday sneeze, all inculcate hospitality, and reward it, by an unexpected visitor. If the needle slants as it stands up in the crack of the floor, it foretells a gentleman! Run, young daughters of the house, and put a blue bow in your hair.

To show that superstitions have a friendly bias toward good luck, witness the couplets on sneezing and on birthdays. Here the good or harmless omen exceeds the bad in the ratio of five to two.

Birthdays are rated as follows: —

And even in picking up pins, the threat is but vague and mild compared with the reward for befriending the homeless pin. In the latter case,—

whereas in the former, you will only —

If you pick it up sidewise, you are promised “a ride.”

The “rain before seven,” the apron wrong-side-out, the black cat coming to your house (which to the uninstructed might look sinister), the two spoons in a dish, the load of hay and creamcolored horse on which your wishes come true, the grain-of-the-table, the consoling “unlucky at cards, lucky in love”; the wishbone, the rice, the old shoe, the moon-over-the-right-shoulder, the double handshake, the cricket on the hearth, the bubbles in the tea, — all are friends and well-wishers for us. There is a difference of opinion as to the bird flying in at one’s window. The majority pronounce it a bad omen; but certain old New Englanders maintain otherwise, and in my own experience it is the luckiest of signs. There was once a time when the last slice of bread on the plate was believed to force celibacy on the rash and hungry one who seized it; but of late it seems universally known as “the handsome husband,” or “five thousand a year.”

A belief in dreams is naturally one of the last strongholds of superstition, as it lies close to the respectable borders of the Psychical Research Society. Experience, however, too often upsets our theories, and takes away the fascinating bugbear we have cherished. I am in a position to prove that there is no harm in dreaming of a rat, or a wedding; or in repeating dreams before breakfast (except that no one will ever listen). On the other hand, to dream of snow, or of being aboard a ship, are private “good-luck signs” of my own. I do not by any means claim them exclusively, but I am left in an unwilling monopoly of them. Readers are more than welcome to them. I have tested them a dozen times, and never known them to fail.

Last year, however, marked a crisis in my traffic with dreams. Up to that period I had indulged a too-ready faith in the dictum that “Dreams are a mirror, in which we see our true selves.” This seemed less a superstition than a plausible hypothesis. Its claims were, I thought, more than supported by a dream in which I saw with painful vividness my contemptible physical cowardice. I was stranded on top of a tower in a lake. I was aware that I was dreaming; and in a sort of inspiration I said to myself, —

“Now is a good chance to see if I have any courage at all. I am only dreaming. Let us see if, in a mere dream, I can’t jump down into that lake, which is only an imaginary lake. Push me off the tower!”

Thus I commanded myself; but that obstinate coward refused, and I woke up, so to speak, on top of the tower.

This experience fixed my faith in the postulate that dreams are a true index to our characters; and for months after it I was proud of creditable dreams, and laid a flattering unction, and so forth; whereas dreams in which I behaved badly cast a long shadow of remorse. I was a slave to this superstition (as I now think it) up to six months ago. But a dream which I had then, represented me as a person of so little principle, such flagrant bad faith, and such perverted instincts, that I turned on the mirror theory and threw it forever out of doors.

As a last witness to the contention that superstition has an indulgent, friendly, sunny side, consider the dozen ways provided of changing one’s luck at cards. If “picking geese” is thought vulgar (though I know a lady of the first water who does it) one can walk, or better, run, round one’s chair; or if too stout, too crowded, or too comfortable to do so, one can “blow the luck” into the cards, when one’s next deal comes round. Or by a risky declaration of trumps, or a harebrained lead of them, one can tempt that April goddess who favors the brave. This last is the most gallant and admirable of all superstitions. Older than “touching wood,” it is more fearless than science itself. It resembles in miniature the great leap that Perseus took at the bidding of the wise goddess. Like other theories originating at cards, it is greatly applicable to life itself. It is that wisdom and valor of the heart which, in Froude’s fine saying, “correct the follies of the head.”