CHARMS AND SUPERSTITIONS.
Mrs. G., born in Lebanon County, says that when they were children one would take a looking-glass and go down the cellar-stairs backward, in order to see therein the form of a future spouse. Another custom was to melt lead and pour it into a cup of cold water, expecting thence to discover some token of the occupation of the same interesting individual. A person in York also remembers that at Halloween her nurse would melt lead and pour it through the handle of the kitchen door-key. The figures were studied and supposed to resemble soldier-caps, books, horses, and so on. This nurse was Irish, but the other domestics were German. A laboring woman from Cumberland County, and afterward from a “Dutch” settlement in Maryland, says that she has heard of persons melting lead to see what trade their man would be of. My German friend before quoted says that in the Palatinate they melted the lead on New-Year’s eve. In Nadler’s poems in the Palatinate dialect, St. Andreas’ night is the time spoken of for melting the lead. This is the 30th of November. Further, in a work called “The Festival Year” (Das Festliche Yahr), by Von Reinsberg-Duringsfeld, Leipsic, 1863, the custom of pouring lead through the beard, or wards, of a key is mentioned.
A lawyer, born in Franklin County, tells me that it is a common superstition among Pennsylvania Germans that persons born on Christmas night can see supernatural things and hear similar sounds. He adds that his mother told him of a person who was sceptical and ridiculed the idea, and was told to go out into his feeding-room and listen. He lay down on the hay, and while there one of the oxen said, “Uebermorgen schieben mir unser Meschter auf den Kirch-hof.” (Day after to-morrow we will haul our master to the graveyard.) And his funeral was on the day specified. My German friend before quoted says that in the Palatinate they believe that as it strikes twelve on Christmas eve, all animals talk together. She adds, “I think that idea is through Germany.”
A gentleman connected with schools in Northampton County says that at Halloween his daughters meet their companions and melt lead into water to tell their fortunes. They also fill their mouths with water that they may not speak, as speaking would break the charm; and walk around a block of houses. The first name which they hear is that of their future spouse. Another practice, which, unlike the foregoing, may be tried at any time of year, is to take a large door-key and tie it within the leaves of a small Bible, the handle remaining out. Two girls rest the handle upon their fingers, and repeat some cabalistic verse; of which, he thinks, each line begins with a different letter, and the key will turn at the initials of the future spouse. These, he says, are the remnants of old superstitions, and he suspects that the human mind is naturally superstitious. He adds, “The population of Easton is mixed so that we cannot tell how many of these are purely German; but by going into the rural German districts of Northampton County you will find many strange ideas, such as that on a certain church festival, say Ascension day, you must not sweep your house, lest it become full of fleas.”
A simple-minded woman in Lancaster County, who showed some regard for the Reformed Church, said that she had sat up late sewing the night before, so as not to sew on Ascension day. “My mother,” she said, “knew a girl that sewed on Ascension day; and there came a gust and killed her.”
One of my German acquaintances calls my attention to the salt-cake eaten in Lancaster. It is made extremely salt, and is eaten by girls, who then go to bed backward without speaking and without drinking; and he of whom they dream is to be their future husband. This, he says, is a custom also in Germany.
But the most universal ideas of this superstitious kind are those connected with the signs in the almanac. Baer’s Almanac, published in Lancaster, still has the signs of the zodiac down the pages, like one shown to me in the Palatinate, where a man of some education said, “Here is where I see how to plant my garden.” What, however, is very mysterious is that when our people tell you you must not plant now, for IT is in the Posy-woman (and the things will all run to blossom, and not bear fruit), they cannot tell what is in the Posy-woman, or Virgo. I infer, however, that it is the moon.
I have been shown a German Bible, which belonged to the grandfather of one of my neighbors, wherein the family births were entered in the German language. I endeavored to decipher one, as follows:
“1797, September den 9ten 1st uns ein Sohn gebohren ihm Zeichen Witter, ehr ist ihn dem nehmlichen Mohnat ihm Herren entshlafen.”
“On the 9th of September, 1797, a son is born to us in the sign of the Ram [Aries]. In the same month he fell asleep in the Lord.”
The same neighbor who owns the old Bible just mentioned tells me that one of the Russian Mennonites showed him a pamphlet in the German language, which the man had brought from Europe; wherein was told what would be the fortune of a child born in each sign, his health, wealth, etc.; but my neighbor says that he, himself, had no faith in it.
“Grain should be sowed in the up-going; meat butchered in the down-going will shrink in the pot.” But my worthy neighbors do not appear to know what it is that is going up and going down. I infer, of course, that it is the moon. Is it not remarkable that my neighbors should be so attached to book-farming? I knew a woman, born among Friends, but in a Pennsylvania German settlement, who was lamenting the smallness of the piece of meat on the table. “What a little piece, and so big before it was cooked! How it has shrunk! It is in the down-going. And those strawberries, too, that I preserved, that went away to so little; they were done in the down-going.” But one of her family spoke up, bravely, “Just so, mother; that must be it. Now I know what’s the matter with my portemonnaie, that it shrinks away so; it’s the down-going.”
These beliefs in the influence of the heavenly bodies must be the relics of astrology remaining in the almanacs, and never drawn now from actual observation of the weather and the planets.
Mrs. Nevin relates the following (Philadelphia Press, June 2, 1875): “There are several superstitions connected with death and funerals in the country, which are a strange blending of the ludicrous with the mournful. One is that if the mother of a family is dying, the vinegar-barrel must be shaken at the time to prevent the ‘mother’ in it from dying. Said a man once in sober earnest to me, ‘I was so sorry Mr. D. was not in the room when his wife died.’ ‘Where was he?’ ‘Oh, in the cellar a-shaking the vinegar-barrel; but if he had just told me, I would have done it and let him been in the room to see her take her last breath.’”
Mrs. Nevin adds: “Another superstition is that the last person that goes out of a house at a funeral will be the next one to die, and as the audience begins to thin, you may see people slip very nimbly out of a back or kitchen door to avoid being that last one.”
The belief in spooks or ghosts is not lost in “Pennsylvania Dutch” land. In some of his verses Mr. Schantz tells (Allentown Friedensbote) of an abandoned school-house standing near a sand-pit, beside some woods. He says,—
“kam mir zu Ohr
Vom Sandloch Schuhlhaus am Kreuzweg
Was Lesern ich nicht gern vorleg.
S’ hen lent g’sad ‘Am Sandloch spukts!’
En mancher hot oft g’frogt, ‘Wie guckt’s?’
Reiter sie sin schnell geridde!
Laüfer nahme g’schwinde Schridde!”
“About the sand-pit school-house, at the cross-roads, things were said that I do not like to tell. It was told that there were spooks at the sand-pit, and ‘In what shape?’ was asked. People riding by rode rapidly, and those on foot hurried swiftly by.” There are still standing near the Conestoga, close to Lancaster, the remains of a building long and extensively known as “the spook house.” It probably became unpopular from a suicide in it, or from having been built in a field where strangers were buried.
A Lutheran clergyman said lately, “I do not believe in spooks myself, but plenty of people do; and sad enough it is that there should be such superstition.”