Thaumaturgia; Or, Elucidations of the Marvellous

by Oxonian

It is very offensive to the peasants, for any one to look into their wells; they think it will cause the wells to dry up.

When manna is carried into the fields, that which falls from the cart is not gathered up, lest mischievous insects and blights come upon the corn.

When an old house is quitted for a new one they are attentive in noting the first animal that dies. If it be an animal with hairy feet, the sign is good; but if with naked feet, some fowl, for instance, there will be mourning in the house; it is a sign of misery and bad success in all their undertakings. These, with a scrupulous adherence to lucky and unlucky days, are the prevailing popular superstitions in the three duchies; a great number of which, especially among the Esthonians, are connected with their ancient mythology.

In reading that pleasant volume, by the late Sir Humphrey Davy, entitled Salmonia, it is impossible not to be struck with his remark respecting omens, which is here briefly noticed, with an account of others, which it is imagined have not yet found their way far into print, in order to account for such seeming absurdities.

"The search after food,[143] as we agreed on a former occasion, is the principal cause why animals change their places. The different tribes of wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take place; and I remember once in Italy, having been long waiting, in the end of March, for the arrival of double snipe, in the campagna of Rome; a great flight appeared on the third of April, and the day after, heavy rain set in, which greatly interfered with my sport. The vulture, upon the same principle, follows armies; and I have no doubt that the augury of the ancients was a good deal founded upon the observation of the instinct of birds. There are many superstitions of the vulgar owing to the same source. For anglers, in spring, it is always unluckly to see single magpies; but two may always be regarded as a favourable omen; and the reason is, that in cold and stormy weather, one magpie alone leaves the nest in search of food, the other remaining sitting upon the eggs of the young ones: but, when two go out together, it is only when the weather is mild and warm, and favourable for fishing.

"This reasoning will, in general, be found correct, and may be applied to solve many of the superstitions in the country; but the case of the magpie is entitled to a little more consideration. The piannet, as we call her in the North of England, is the most unlucky of all birds, to see singly at any time; this, however, does not often happen, except a short time during incubation; they either appear in pairs or in families; but even this last appearance is as alarming to our grandmothers. The following distich shows what each forbodes:—'One sorrow, two mirth, three a wedding, four death.' This bird, indeed, appears to have taken the same place with us, as an omen of evil, that the owl had amongst the ancients. The nurse is often heard to declare that she has lost all hopes of her charge when she has observed a piannet on the house-top.

"Another prejudice, indulged even by our good wives, is that of destroying the feathers of the pigeon instead of saving them to stuff beds, etc. They say, that if they were to do so, it would only prolong the sufferings of the death-bed; and when these are more than usually severe, it is attributed to this cause, and the reason given 'because the bird has no gall' is to them quite conclusive, but to me, perfectly irrelevant and unsatisfactory. A belief amongst boys, that to harm or disturb the nests of the redbreast or swallow is unlucky, appears very general throughout the kingdom; and the keen bird-nester, who prides himself on the quantity of eggs blown and strung bead-fashion, here often gets mortified by finding his trophies destroyed by the housewife who considers their presence as affecting the safety of her crokery ware. This belief may have been encouraged, if not invented, for a humane purpose: but how are we to account for the efficacy of the Irish stone in curing swellings caused by venomous reptiles, by merely being rubbed upon the part affected? The fullest faith in the practice appears to have prevailed in the country at no distant period, and is yet far from extinct. The swallow and the cuckoo are generally hailed as harbingers of spring and summer, but, perhaps, many of our readers are not aware that it is only lucky to hear the cuckoo, for the first time in the season, upon soft ground in contradistinction to hard roads, and with money in the pocket, which the youngster is sagely advised to be sure then to turn over. Perhaps the season of the year may satisfactorily explain all these observances. Several superstitious customs are mentioned regarding bees, some of which are not practised in the north; yet it is fully believed that the death of the stock of hives too often foretells the flitting of the bee-master. Wet cold years, unfavourable to the insects, are also equally so to the farmer upon thin clays, which border the moors, where bees are mostly kept. Has the use of the mountain ash, 'rowan tree' [Pyrus aucuparia, Gaertner,] as a charm against witchcraft, ever been accounted for? The belief in its efficacy must be very old if we are to credit some of Shakspeare's commentators, who give this word as the true reading in Macbeth, instead of 'Aroint thee, witch!'

"It often happens that the careless observer has, for the first time, his attention called forcibly to some appearance of nature by accidental circumstances: if at all superstitious, he immediately prognosticates the most disastrous consequences from that which a little observation would have convinced him was but a phenomenon a little more conspicuous than usual. The northern lights are said to have caused much consternation when first observed; and they have lately been viewed with more than ordinary interest, as it appears from the Newcastle Chronicle, the last autumn (1830), when they were more than usually brilliant, some of the inhabitants of Weardale were convinced they saw, on one occasion, very distinctly, the figure of a man on a white horse, with a red sword in his hand, move across the heavens; and are, no doubt, now certain that it foretold the present eventful times. Even this belief may be accounted for on such accidental coincidences, or even philosophically, by assuming as a fact that this phenomenon is the result of an electrical change in the atmosphere, and that such a change usually precedes rain. Now, if such happen in spring or in summer, and before such a quantity of rain as is found to affect the harvest, it may too often betoken scarcity, discontent, and turbulence, as such are the times when all grievances, either real or imaginary, are brought forward for redress. The origin of the superstition of sailors, of nailing a horse-shoe to the mast, is to me unaccountable, unless it may have been, like the following trial of the credulity of the superstitious by some person for amusement:—Sailors sometimes make a considerable pecuniary sacrifice for the acquisition of a child's caul, the retaining of which is to infallibly preserve them from drowning.

"Some years ago, a pretty wide district was alarmed by an account of the beans [Fàba vulgàris var. equina] being laid the wrong way in the pod that year, which most certainly foreboded something terrible to happen in a short time, and this produced much consternation amongst those who allow their imaginations to run riot. The whole of the terrible omen was this: the eye of the bean was in the pod towards the apex, instead of being towards the footstalk, as might appear at first sight to be its natural position; and some were scarcely convinced that this was the natural position of the beans in the pod ever since the creation, even on being shown the pod of the preceding year with the seed in the same position.

"As yet, however, I fear we must sum up in the words of Davy:—