Burning ears: an ancient superstition

Are your ears burning? If they are, it is presumably because someone, somewhere, is talking about you! At least, that is the belief held by some, although “old wives tale” would surely be nearer the truth!

The superstition – for it is nothing more than that – only applies when the talking is being done way out of earshot – it is not the case that you suspect that you are the subject of discussion between people on the other side of the room but can’t quite hear what they are saying.

It might surprise you to learn that this notion owes its existence to the Roman writer Pliny the Elder, who wrote during the first century AD and was a victim of the eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD. Pliny set out to write down as much knowledge – about everything – as he could gather, producing 37 volumes of his “Natural History”. It was his insatiable curiosity that prompted him to get too close to Vesuvius.

In Book 28 of Natural History Pliny wrote a collection of commonly held superstitions, and he managed to find and record around 20,000 of them. Somewhere on the list was:

“… it is believed that absent people divine, by the ringing in their ears, that people are talking about them.”

It is important to remember that Pliny’s intention was to debunk all these superstitions, not to publicize them, but the latter does appear to have been the end result.

One writer who took up the idea – whether directly or indirectly from Pliny is not known – was Geoffrey Chaucer, who used it in his Troilus and Criseyde, written in the 1370s. Criseyde’s uncle Pandarus tells her that he and Troilus will:

“… speak of thee somewhat … when thou art gone, to make thy ears glow”

This is not quite what Pliny had in mind, given that the person with glowing ears is not supposed to know that they are the topic of conversation, but only to assume that they are - due to the red ears!

Although this is clearly a piece of nonsense, as Pliny tried to make clear, the superstition is still around nearly 2,000 years later. However, let’s hope that not too many people take it seriously. It is almost always mentioned as a joke, such as: “We were talking about you yesterday, were your ears burning?” – to which the answer should always be “No”!

© John Welford