Superstitions concerning doors

Doors, and how they are used, have long featured in various superstitions that people have held down the centuries. In particular, forbidding the entry of evil spirits and the exit of good luck have been regarded as being of particular importance.

The porch of the front door, which is the main entrance, should be protected by a good luck charm. This could be a small statue – a household god in ancient Rome – or a horseshoe, but the latter must always be nailed so that the points are at the top, otherwise the good luck could fall out!

When you first move into a new home you must use the front door the first time you enter it, because the back door is not protected against evil spirits and one or more might slip in alongside you. You must also ensure that visitors to your home always leave by the same door by which they entered, because otherwise they will take the owner’s good luck out of the house when they leave.

If a door opens of its own accord – maybe due to a gust of wind – a visitor is on their way, and if a door slams, that could mean that the good spirits that look after your home might be injured or trapped!

Doors and windows should be left open when a baby is born or someone is dying. This is so that the person’s soul can enter or leave without hindrance.

The Romans had the idea that it was unlucky to allow someone to enter your home with the left foot first. Wealthy Romans even employed servants to make sure that this never happened. This is the origin of the “footman” who formed part of the establishment of well-to-do families in more recent times.

Do you actually believe in any of these superstitions? And, if so, why?!

© John Welford

Zodiacal nonsense

The name Zodiac refers to the twelve constellations of stars that are of particular interest to astrologers. Everyone knows which “sign” they belong to, but what do they mean in reality?

The plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun is known as the Ecliptic. It is also the plane within which all the recognised planets orbit. Given that the passage taken by Earth round the Sun takes one year to complete, the star background on the opposite side of the Sun as seen from Earth also changes.

The ancient Greeks distinguished twelve constellations though which the Sun appeared to pass. These are the Zodiacal constellations of Capricorn, Aquarias, Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio and Sagittarius. It has to be said that they are not necessarily the most recognisable constellations in the night sky!

One problem with determining these as the Zodiacal constellations is that they are not all the same size, and so it is not true that the Sun is “in Leo” (for example) for one month before moving entirely out of Leo and into Virgo.

An even greater problem is that the degree of the Earth’s tilt has changed slightly since ancient times, and this is enough to have disrupted the pattern of the Zodiac constellations in terms of their appearance in twelve equal episodes.

However, these problems do not seem to have bothered the astrologers, who stick to the original Zodiacal dates on the assumption that the mythological attributes of the creatures whose names have been given to the constellations are just as relevant to the personalities of people born at specific times of the year as they ever were.

Of course, given that the whole concept was barmy in the first place, the fact that the Zodiac constellations are in the wrong places makes not a blind bit a difference – it was nonsense in ancient times and still is today!

© John Welford

The ring finger

The fourth finger (if the thumb counts as the first!) is traditionally the finger on which engagement and wedding rings are worn. But why is this?

It comes from an ancient (and entirely erroneous) belief that a nerve runs from this finger directly to the heart. Given that the heart has always been renowned as the seat of love – hence “giving your heart” and having “heart-felt emotions” – the link to the rings that signified love was appropriate enough.

This idea is also the reason why the finger has been called the “medical finger”. The Greeks and Romans reckoned that the nerve mentioned above would “warn the heart” if the finger came into contact with anything noxious, so the finger was used to stir medical concoctions. Presumably, if your heart jumped a beat during this process you would stop stirring and re-constitute your mixture so that it would be less likely to kill the patient!

Despite the complete lack of evidence for this belief, some people still maintain the superstition that it is unlucky to rub in ointment or scratch the skin with any finger other than the fourth.

© John Welford

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

Theatrical superstitions

Actors tend to be a very superstitious lot. This could have much to do with the narrow line they tread between success and disaster when it comes to giving a performance on stage. A forgotten line, a missed cue, or falling over the furniture, could translate a potential triumph into terrible reviews and lost audiences, not to mention the potential for injury or worse if a swordfight or similar action does not go as planned.

That play about some king from north of the border

Most people know that actors have a special horror of quoting William Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”, or even mentioning it by name, anywhere within a theatre, and some extend that ban to the outside world. The play is therefore referred to as “the Scottish play”. The reason for this ban is not obvious, although all that stage witchcraft might be thought to cast bad omens on the play. Some quite nasty injuries have also been recorded during fight scenes that have gone wrong, although there are many other plays of which the same is true.

Break a leg

Another well-known superstition beloved of actors is that you never wish someone “good luck” because the opposite is bound to come true. Instead, the wish is expressed as “break a leg” – again in the expectation that no such calamity will befall anyone.

Or at least, that is what is generally believed. However, there are other possible derivations of this custom. One is that the stage curtain is sometimes referred to as the “leg”, and the mechanism for raising and lowering it might break if the performance was so well received that a large number of curtain calls was called for at the end of the show!

Another possibility, also related to curtain calls, is that one’s leg needs to bend when taking a bow, so “breaking” it (in the sense that a shotgun is broken when bent to reload it) would be regarded as a good thing.

It has also been suggested that the reference is to the actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) who continued her acting career after her right leg was amputated in 1915 following a stage accident in 1905 (gangrene had set in) and she often refused to wear an artificial one.

A less likely suggestion is that the custom refers to the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln while he and his wife were at the theatre. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, broke his leg as he leapt from the theatre box on to the stage. However, the connection between this circumstance and wishing actors good luck is hard to see.

Some other superstitions

Moving on, there is a somewhat annoying tradition, at least from the perspective of a theatrical director, that a good final dress rehearsal is a premonition of a terrible opening night, and vice versa. Far too many members of amateur dramatic societies have used this as an excuse for cheerfully getting it wrong at rehearsal and then airing the view that “it’ll be all right on the night” – an optimistic conviction that is often found to be misplaced!

Whistling or clapping backstage is definitely frowned upon, although there used to be a good reason for this taboo in that the cues that stage crew members used for moving scenery and props were, in the days before radio communication, whistles and claps. If someone whistled or clapped at the wrong time the result could be disastrous.

All theatres traditionally had a cat on the premises, for the purpose of keeping vermin at bay – a rope gnawed by a rat was an accident waiting to happen. It therefore became a good luck charm for an actor to see the cat at the stage door as he or she arrived at the theatre. Knowing that the cat was on duty was clearly going to put him or her in a good frame of mind!

Individual actors are known to acquire all sorts of superstitions in terms of how they prepare for their performance, and theatre managers need to be aware of their particular peccadillos when it comes to preparing their changing rooms. An actor who is out of sorts because his changing room is at one end of the corridor instead of the other, or if there is a broken light bulb on his mirror, is not good news when a perfect performance is called for.

Theatres are superstitious places – often with good reason, but by no means always!

© John Welford

Some superstitions regarding clothes

In times gone by, getting brand new clothes was a special event. It is therefore no surprise that several superstitions have grown up around clothing, particularly where new clothes are concerned.

Money in pockets

Good luck could be added to clothes by placing money in pockets. In 19^th century Britain a tailor would put a halfpenny (old money!) in each pocket of a man’s new suit. Some tailors went further and added another halfpenny to the second pocket, yet another to the third, and so on. Presumably this was done by tailors who limited the number of pockets they put in their suits!

Another tradition was that a boy who was given a new suit would, when wearing it for the first time, visit all his neighbours, each of whom would give him money for his pockets. The neighbours had to be careful which pocket they put the money in, though, because if someone put the money in the left pocket they would always be short of money themselves. It was just as well that getting new suits was not something that happened very often, otherwise the whole neighbourhood would soon have been short of cash!

How to avoid bad luck

Bad luck would follow you if you treated your clothes the wrong way, whether new or old. In the days when shirts had tails, it was important not to iron the tail. This was not just to save time, given that the tail was always tucked away out of sight anyway, but ironing the tail meant that you were ironing money away.

It was also important not to try mending your clothes while you were wearing them. This had nothing to with the probability of sticking yourself with a needle but it was back to money again. You would never grow rich if you did so, apparently!

If the hem of a jacket or a lady’s dress was accidentally turned up, that meant that a letter was on its way. However, it was important to let the hem sort itself out – it you tidied it yourself the letter would not arrive after all!

It was good luck to accidentally put an item of clothing on inside-out, but you had to leave it as it was for the whole day, otherwise your good luck would disappear.

However, it was bad luck to catch a skirt in a doorway, and not only because you might tear it. Letting your clothes get gnawed by rats was the worst luck of all, because that indicated that somebody close to you would soon die.

Should that event come to pass, you would of course need to wear mourning clothes, but it was important to get rid them as soon as the mourning period was over. It was also vital not to wear mourning clothes unless you were actually in mourning.

There was so much to remember if you wanted to stay rich, lucky and alive!

© John Welford

Superstitions concerning salt

Salt has been an important element in people’s lives for many centuries. It has the important function of being able to preserve food, and was therefore vital in the days before refrigeration. Having access to salt could make the difference between eating and starving, especially during the winter when fresh food was hard to come by.

Salt acquired a value of its own and was even used in place of currency in some parts of the world. We get our word “salary” from the Latin for salt, not because Roman soldiers were paid in salt, as is sometimes thought, but because they used most of their income to buy salt in order to keep their food fresh. They were therefore paid their “salt money”.

It is not surprising that many superstitions have arisen that concern salt, given its importance in the lives of people from ancient times. These superstitions are mostly to do with salt bringing good luck and averting evil.

Spilling salt was often regarded as an unlucky thing to do, because it was such a precious thing. In North America the custom was to sweep up any spillage and throw it on the fire, which had the added bonus of drying up any tears that might be shed. Throwing salt on the fire, whether spilled or not, was also supposed to undo the bad effects of some previous unwise action.

However, throwing salt over the left shoulder is supposed to avert bad luck, and sprinkling it on the doorstep ensures that the unwelcome visitor who has just left – the rent man for example – will not come back. That sounds like wishful thinking in more ways than one!

Salt has long had an association with keeping witches and evil spirits at bay, and this was probably behind the custom, when moving into a new house, of getting a child to sprinkle salt on the hearth and in every corner of every room. Another version of this custom was to take a bar of salt into the house before any furniture was allowed to be moved in.

It is unlucky to borrow salt and then return any that has not been used – so the lender must be sure not to let the salt-less person have too much!

Most people who use salt these days do so to flavour their food. However, it is very unlucky – so it is said – to add salt to someone else’s food at the table. This has led to the saying: “Help me to salt, help me to sorrow”.

It is also, of course, extremely unlucky to confuse your salt and sugar dispensers. The number of people who have had a nasty experience after enthusiastically salting their coffee is too many to count!

© John Welford