STRANGE SURVIVALS:
SOME CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF MAN.
I.
On Foundations.
When the writer was a parson in Yorkshire, he had in his parish a blacksmith blessed, or afflicted—which shall we say?—with seven daughters and not a son. Now the parish was a newly constituted one, and it had a temporary licensed service room; but during the week before the newly erected church was to be consecrated, the blacksmith’s wife presented her husband with a boy—his first boy. Then the blacksmith came to the parson, and the following conversation ensued:—
Blacksmith: “Please, sir, I’ve gotten a little lad at last, and I want to have him baptised on Sunday.”
Parson: “Why, Joseph, put it off till Thursday, when the new church will be consecrated; then your little man will be the first child christened in the new font in the new church.”
Blacksmith (shuffling with his feet, hitching his shoulders, looking down): “Please, sir, folks say that t’ fust child as is baptised i’ a new church is bound to dee (die). T’ old un (the devil) claims it. Now, sir, I’ve seven little lasses, and but one lad. If this were a lass again ’twouldn’t ’a’ mattered; but as it’s a lad—well, sir, I won’t risk it.”
A curious instance this of a very widespread and very ancient superstition, the origin of which we shall arrive at presently.