26. A broom put upside down behind the door will keep away the witches.
27. It is bad luck to lay a loaf upside down on the table.
28. In carrying a child to church to be christened it is important to carry it by the broadest streets, and to avoid narrow lanes and byways, else when it is big it will become a thief.
29. If a murderer be confronted with the corpse of his victim the wounds will begin to bleed again.[16]
30. Avoid a toad, as it may be a witch.
31. Little children’s nails should be bitten off instead of cut the first time, lest they learn to steal.
32. An approved sort of love charm is to take the two hind legs of a green tree-frog, bury these in an anthill till all the flesh is removed, then tie them up securely in a linen handkerchief, and whosoever touches this linen will be seized at once with love for its owner.
33. To avert many illnesses which may occur to the pigs, it is still customary in some places for the swineherd to dispense with his clothes the first time he drives out his pigs to pasture in spring. A newly elected clergyman, regarding this practice as immoral, tried to forbid it in his parish, but was sternly asked by the village bailiff whether he was prepared to pay for all the pigs which would assuredly die that year in consequence of the omission.
34. The same absence of costume is likewise recommended to women assisting a cow to calve.
The night of St. Thomas (21st of December) is the date consecrated by Saxon superstition to the celebration of the games which elsewhere are usual on All-Halloween. Every girl puts her fate to the test on this evening, and there are various ways of so doing (too lengthy to be here described), with shoes, flowers, onions, &c. For the twelve days following it is not allowed to spin, and the young men who visit the spinning-room of the girls have the right to break and burn all the distaffs they find, so it has become usual for the maidens to appear with a stick dressed up with wool to represent the distaff instead of a real spinning-wheel.