If a woman gives birth to a child with the right ear missing, the days of the ruler will be long.
If a woman gives birth to a child with the left ear missing, distress will enter the land and weaken it.
While in general the absence of any part of the body is a sign of distress for the country and individual by a perfectly natural association of ideas, yet this general principle is modified by the further consideration that 'right' is a good omen and 'left' a bad one. But this consideration which makes the absence of the 'right' ear a good omen may again be offset by the entrance of a third factor. So we are told that
If a woman gives birth to a child with a small[639] right ear, the house of the man[640] will be destroyed.
The omen of misfortune in this case is the deformity in the organ, and the fact that the more important right ear is deformed, so far from mitigating the force of the omen, accentuates its consequences.
If a deformed right ear is disastrous, we are prepared to learn that
If a woman gives birth to a child with both ears short, the house of the man will be utterly rooted out.
No less than eleven varieties of deformed ears are enumerated. It must not be supposed, however, that the factors involved in this omen science are always or even generally so simple. In most cases the connection between the sign and the conclusion drawn, is not clear to us because of the multiplicity of factors involved. Further publication and study of omen texts will no doubt make some points clear which are now obscure, but we cannot expect ever to find out all the factors that were taken into account by the populace and the schoolmen, in proposing and accepting certain interpretations of certain omens, any more than we can fathom the reasons for the similar superstition found among other nations[641] of antiquity and modern times. Recognizing certain principles in some of the omens, we are justified in concluding that whatever else determined the interpretation of omens, caprice did not enter into consideration, but rather an association of ideas that escapes us, simply because our logic differs from the logic of primitive peoples in certain important particulars.
The list of peculiarities occurring in the case of babes continues as follows:
If a woman gives birth to a child whose mouth is shaped like a bird's, the country will be stirred up.