Where children are brought in batches to be baptized, as is often the case in large towns, it is curious to note that superstitions exist about the precedence of sexes, though in different places the ideas are contrary. Thus in the North of England there are places where the parents are very anxious that the girls should be taken first, on the ground that otherwise the boys will be beardless. In Surrey and Worcestershire the same desire is expressed; in the West of Scotland the males have precedence. The old ideas can hardly be classed under superstitions. In those churches, where now-a-days ancient rules are revived, Holy Communion is always administered to men before women, and Confirmation to boys. Maskell, in his Monumenta Ritualia, Eccl., Angl., 1-23, quotes the following rubric from Bishop Leofric’s missal:—“Et accipiat presbyter eos a parentibus eorum, et baptizantur primi masculi deinde feminae, sub trina mersione, Sanctam Trinitatem semel invocando.”
Cases are on record where a cottager’s tenth child was christened with a sprig of myrtle in its cap to mark it as the tithe child; it is said that a Rector of Compton recognized such a tithe child, and sent him to school.
One of the silliest and most mischievous pieces of legislation was the Act 23, George III., c. 67. It enacted that after the 1st of October, 1783, stamp duty of 3d. should be paid to His Majesty on the entry of every marriage, birth, or christening, in the register of every parish, precinct, or place in Great Britain, under penalty of £5 for each entry. And that the churchwardens should provide a book for each entry, and the parson, vicar, curate, and other person receiving the duty was to be allowed 2s. in the £ for his trouble. By 25 George III., c. 75, the tax was extended to dissenters. People were furious, and the poor parson, who was supposed to be charging for his own benefit, got the hardest words. The Act was repealed by 34 George III., c. 11, the tax ceasing October 1st, 1794.
In conclusion, we will put together a few odds and ends of folk lore. In Ayrshire, in the end of the last century, when a child was taken to a distance to be baptized, a quantity of salt was placed round it before leaving the house, to ward off evil.
In Worcestershire, it is considered that if an engaged couple stand as god-parents to the same child, it is a sure sign that their engagement will never end in marriage. This is clearly a relic of what we have already noticed, the mediæval church law by which those persons who stood in any spiritual relationship to one another were thereby debarred from contracting marriage.
In Dalston, Carlisle, there is a belief that if the baptism of a child takes place after it has been “shortened,” the baby will not only be noisy and disagreeable in church during the administration of the sacrament, but will remain bad-tempered and ill-natured for ever afterwards.
The belief still prevails in many rural districts that children dying unbaptized wander in woods and solitudes lamenting their hard fate. In Sweden parents will, therefore, carry a child miles away in the depth of winter to the minister to have it baptized before it is half-a-day old. There are, however, methods by which it is supposed even if baptism be deferred, that the devil’s power over the child can be neutralized. One is to wrap it in red cloth and lay it in its cradle, with a psalm book and a pair of scissors placed crosswise upon its breast.
“In presenting a child to the minister, its head must be on the right arm of the male parent.” (West of Scotland).
Brand quotes from a book on Scotland, published in 1793, the statement that the inhabitants of Kirkwall and S. Ola would consider it as an unhappy omen were they by any means disappointed in getting their children baptized on the very day which they had previously fixed in their minds for that purpose.
The same compiler has this:—In the North, when the child was taken to church to be christened, a little boy was engaged to meet the infant on leaving the house, because it was deemed an unlucky omen to encounter a female first.