39. If a vacant rocking-chair is rocked violently, the next person who sits in it will be in danger of being ill within the year.
40. It is a lucky sign to have crickets in the house. Grose says it is held extremely unlucky to kill a cricket, perhaps from the idea of its being a breach of hospitality, this insect taking refuge in houses. The voice of a cricket, says the “Spectator,” has struck more terror than the roaring of a lion.
The following line occurs in Dryden’s and Lee’s “Œdipus:”
“Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death.”
Melton says that “it is a signe of death to some in that house where crickets have been many yeares, if on a sudden they forsake the chimney.” (See [14].)
41. It is said that a married person will not get rich until the wedding clothes are worn out. It is also said to be a sign that one will fail to get rich who tries to see to work between daylight and dark.
42. It is a bad omen to postpone a marriage after the time positively appointed.
43. If your right ear burns or itches, it is a sign that some absent person is speaking well of you; your left ear burning, signifies that you are being spoken ill of.
44. The superstition has become almost universal, that the ticking of a little insect called the “death-watch,” presages the death of some one in the house.
“How many people have I seen in the most terrible palpitations, for months together, expecting every hour the approach of some calamity, only by a little worm, which breeds in an old wainscot, and, endeavoring to eat its way out, makes a noise like the movement of a watch!”—Secret Memoirs of the late Mr. Duncan Campbell, 1732.