Cutting Nails.
Cut your nails on a Monday, cut for a gift.
Cut your nails on a Tuesday, cut them for thrift.
Cut your nails on a Wednesday, cut them for news.
Cut your nails on a Thursday, cut for a new pair of shoes.
Cut your nails on a Friday, cut them for sorrow,
Cut your nails on a Saturday, see your sweetheart to-morrow.
Cut them on Sunday, cut them for evil.
Cut them all the week round, and you'll go to the devil.
Better that child had ne'er been born,
Who cuts its nails on a Sunday morn.
Of a Friday's pare,
No good will come near.
If you cut your nails on Monday morning before breakfast, and without thinking of a fox's tail, you will have a gift before the week is out. When told this, I asked, Why not a fox's brush? "Oh, no!" was the reply, "you may think of the brush but not the tail."
White specks on the nails are called gifts, and the rhyme says:—
A gift on the finger is sure to linger,
A gift on the thumb, is sure to come.
In this district many mothers will not allow their babie's nails to be cut before they are a year old, but they bite the edges off. If the nails are cut the children grow up thieves.
A new born babe, before being taken out of the house, should be carried up some stairs, but if it is born in a room at the top of the house, the nurse lifts it up and gets on a chair, and puts the child on the top of something high, so that it may rise in the world.
If a pair of shoes are placed on the table a quarrel is sure to ensue.