Many Nits, many pits.”
It is thought very unlucky in Sussex to use green brooms in May, and an old saying is current in the same county that—
“If you sweep the house with Broom in May,
You’ll sweep the head of that house away.”
In West Sussex, there exists the strange idea that if anyone eats a Blackberry after Old Michaelmas Day (October 10th), death or disaster will alight either on the eater or his kinsfolk before the year is out.
In some parts of England a superstition exists that if in a row of Beans one should chance to come up white, instead of green, a death will occur in the family within the year.
In certain English counties there is a superstitious dread that if a drill go from one end of the field to the other without depositing any seed, some person on the farm will die either before the year is out or before the crop then sown is reaped.
There is a very ancient belief that if every vestige of the Christmas decorations is not removed from the church before Candlemas Day (February 2nd), there will be a death during the year in the family occupying the pew where perchance a leaf or a berry has been left. Herrick has alluded to this superstitious notion in his ‘Hesperides’:—
“Down with the Rosemary, and so
Down with the Baies and Mistletoe: