Contrast with this the English version:
Born of a Monday, fair in face;
Born of a Tuesday, full of God’s grace;
Born of a Wednesday, merry and glad;
Born of a Thursday, sour and sad;
Born of a Friday, godly given;
Born of a Saturday, work for your living;
Born of a Sunday, never shall we want—
So there ends the week, and there’s an end on’t.
Any superstitious rustic who, from the page of the cottage Bible, dug out the deep secret of the day of his birth, would easily find the rhyme true of himself for any day of the week. Any country girl would trust it was true, if she was born on a Monday. And who that came on a Tuesday would confess himself graceless? But about Wednesday’s bairn there seems to be a difference of opinion among the prophets: one rhyme predicts ‘a child of woe;’ the other says, ‘merry and glad;’ while a third, well known in Devonshire, says, ‘sour and grum;’ and thereby, from self-contradiction, the old rhyme goes down like a house of cards. But all the rhymsters are agreed that Saturday’s child works hard for his living—as no doubt the children of every other day of the week work too, in the sphere of labouring country-life in which these old sayings are known. And as variable as this forecast there are many others; for every firm believer in superstition has a secret satisfaction in proving it true; and which of us is there that could not read our life as the interpretation of any forecast, since we all can look at the bright or the dark side, having known alike the good and the evil days?