That, that I desire.”
He or she who finds a red ribbon, tape, or even a piece of red stuff of any kind, especially if it be wool, will have luck in love. It must be picked up and carried as an amulet, and when raising it from the ground the finder must make a wish for the love of some person, or if he have no particular desire for any one, he may wish for luck in love, or a sweetheart. This is, I believe, pretty generally known in some form all over the world. A yellow ribbon or flower, especially if it be floating on water, presages gold; a white object, silver, or peace or reconciliation with enemies.
It is also lucky for love to find a key. In Tuscany there is a special formula which must be spoken while picking it up. Very old keys are valuable amulets. Those who carry them will learn secrets, penetrate mysteries, and succeed in what they undertake.
If you can get a shoe which a girl has worn you may make sad havoc with her heart if you carry it near your own. Also hang it up over your bed and put into it the leaves of rue.
During November, 1889, not a few newspaper commentators busied themselves with conjectures as to why a Scotch constable buried the boots of a murdered man. That it was done through some superstitious belief is conceded; but what the fashion of the superstition is seems unknown. It originated, beyond question, in the old Norse custom of always burying the dead in their shoes or with them. For they believed that the deceased would have, when he arrived in the other world, to traverse broad and burning plains before he could reach his destination, be it Valhalla or the dreary home of Hel; and to protect his feet from the fire his friends bound on them the “hell-shoon.” Other cares were also taken: and in the saga of Olof Tryggvasen we are told that one monarch was thoughtfully provided with a cow; while the Vikings were buried in their ships, so that they could keep on pirating “for ever and ever.”
The superstition of the burial of the boots probably survives in England. It is about seventeen years since the writer heard from an old gypsy that when another gypsy was “pûvado,” or “earthed,” a very good pair of boots was placed by him in the grave. The reason was not given; perhaps it was not known. These customs often survive after the cause is forgotten, simply from some feeling that good or bad luck attends their observance or the neglect of it. Many years since a writer in an article on shoes in The English Magazine stated that, “according to an Aryan tradition, the greater part of the way from the land of the living to that of death lay through morasses and vast moors overgrown with furzes and thorns. That the dead might not pass over them bare-foot, a pair of shoes was laid with them in the grave.”
The shoe was of old in many countries a symbol of life, liberty, or entire personal control. In Ruth we are told that “it was the custom in Israel concerning changing, that a man plucked off his shoe and delivered it to his neighbour.” So the bride, who was originally always a slave, transferred herself by the symbol of the shoe. When the Emperor Waldimir made proposals of marriage to the daughter of Ragnald, she replied scornfully that she would not take off her shoes to the son of a slave. Gregory of Tours, in speaking of wedding, says: “The bridegroom, having given a ring to the bride, presents her with a shoe.”
As regards the Scandinavian hel-shoe, or hell-shoon, Kelley, in his “Indo-European Folk-lore,” tells us that a funeral is still called a dead shoe in the Henneberg district; and the writer already cited adds that in a MS. of the Cotton Library, containing an account of Cleveland in Yorkshire, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, there is a passage which illustrates this curious custom. It was quoted by Sir Walter Scott in the notes to “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,” and runs thus:—
“When any dieth certaine women sing a song to the dead bodie, reciting the journey that the partye deceased must goe; and they are of beliefe that once in their lives it is goode to give a pair of new shoes to a poor man; forasmuch as before this life they are to pass bare-foote through a great lande, full of thornes and furzen—excepte by the meryte of the almes aforesaid they have redeemed the forfeyte—for at the edge of the launde an oulde man shall meet them with the same shoes that were given by the partie when he was lyving, and after he hath shodde them dismisseth them to go through thick and thin without scratch or scalle.
This must be a very agreeable reflection to all gentlemen who have bestowed their old boots on waiters, or ladies who have in like fashion gifted their maids. It is true, the legend specifies new shoes; but surely a pair of thirty-shilling boots only half worn count for as much as a new pair of half a sovereign chaussures. However, if one is to go “through thick and thin without scratch or scalle,” it may be just as well to be on the safe side, and give a good new extra stout pair to the gardener for Christmas. For truly these superstitions are strange things, and no one knows what may be in them.