SUPERSTITIONS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5368, 24 December 1928, Page 4

SUPERSTITIONS.

, LINGERING TOiDAY. RAG-BAG OF OLD IDEAS. We are the heirs of all the ages, recalls Oswald Barron, English authority on folk-lore, introducing a series of articles on superstition in modern life in the London Daily Mail. What we learned yesterday, he says, is the truth as far as we understand what the new science has beep. telling. But it goes into our pack with odd things we picked up ages ago, before we equid read and write or trim our nails. He goes on :—

“What a rag-hag we carry ! Here we are, not quite sure of everything that the professors say, not wholly disbelieving what we were told by the witch-doctors at the beginning of the Stone Age-

“They say that our. new-borji babies will cling to a finger or to, an um-brella-handle and 'hang from 'it as the young ape will hang to the bough. This is so, for I have seen a baby do it. A Professor of higher mathe-i matics, who looked like the modernist of professors, told me that if you wear an iron ring hidden in your golden ring it would keep off rheumatism. gome forefather of his must have learned 1 as much so soon as we came to work In iron and make magical toys outnf that wonderful metal. “Iron is still magical. One must be careful in handling it, careful to make no gifts of knives. When a pent knife changes hands we take a three‘penny bit for it, cloaking the gift as though it were for sale. “Your doqr, it is charmed with the 'h’oly iron against death, against malice of witchcraft ? My front door is safe; so soon as we mqved l into our house I nailed up the ol.d hbrseshoe which an omnibus horse had c,ast at my feet. Even so have householders nailed up the shoe ever since they had the holy iron; it kept them safe from the charms of the wild folk on the other aide of the hill, Whc< had' no iron, who were still chip-, ping flint. A powerful thing is the horseshoe of iron, the Shbe of the horse, which is a sacred beast.

j, “Gold, also, that is a mighty thing. It was but last week,.wthen I had a stye c«n the eyejid, that a young woman of the newest fashion besought me to stroke the stye with a golden wedding r.ing. I thanked her, but I ha<l done that the first thing in the ; morning. Now the stye is gone; how handy this ojdl magic comes in! THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEAD. “Doubtless we believe, the words written In wise books by the professors ; we must believe them, and reverently. But that is with one side of our heads; the other side geps on recalling fvhat our ancestors said in the. old time as they sat with their feet to the fire. As I write this I shudt]e r to think of that man who, at dinner in my own hejuse, tried again and agpin to send! the deganter round . from left to right, the way that is against the sun. A man like that would have brought down a curse on’the house.

“So we live; half by the new rules of wise men and half by ancient lore that comes down to u» out of the darkness of the darkest ag®. We are yet playing with charms, considering dreams and. and toying With scraps of old magic.

“If you dqubt this think of what happened at Weymouth on the day when, as a foolish prophet had told Weymouth, it shout'd be whelmed, by a wave of the sea. There were many who heeded the prophet; nobod?, I think, put questions to men of science. At Weymouth men waite I with their eyes upon the ’clock for the terrible inoment; they giggled, but they watched the c 10c,k.”

“But of all people who see omens, portents, and strange warningssigns, ns none is- quite, so rationalistic in his folly as the gambler,” writes E/tgar Wallace, English novelist and. playwright, who contributes anothw number to this series. *He is thinking, he says, more particularly of professional gamblers, and not of the dilettanti who invest their louis oa the black er red.' He goes oni:— FIRST HORSE YOU. SEE. “It is the amateur, .veriest bier in chanc.e, wh'o ?.carries rabbits’ feet, eschews green, and! rggrds the passing of a funeral on his way to a racecourse as a very bad! sign if he passes it coming towards him and a veiry good sign if he passes it from behind.

’“There is one supersttitiejn which persists, and that is to back the first racehorse you see or the horse of the first owner you meet on your X a X to a rac.ecqurse. It is an inexplicable but nevertheless a peculiar tact that this tip very oftem comes off. “The left hand plays an important part in the superstitions <rf the gambler. I know men who swear, they can never win at cards if this dealer is; left-handed. There are players who, to change their, luck, will get out and! waJk three times rOjund the chair in which they have been sitting, but it is always right-hanckMl—that is to say, clockwfoie.

“Monte Carlo in the season is a welter of superstition. There is a Frenchma n who* goes there every year to play sa system. Across his ample waistcoa t is a large gold chain, from every link of which depends’, a charm ; tigers’ claws, kewpies, an id heaven knows -what other, mysterious gadgets nepofje in ever y pocket, and every finger of his h ands is covered with charm rings. Nor is he unique. If you st roll round the tables you will see at every one people who lhave be-i fore them some potent nuagic to charm luck thier way.

“I know 'two or three me|n u’ho bet very largel; y wihq would not dr» iam of gambling ’in the accepted sense if they* had smarted the day badly with an nnpleas ant letter by the mon ling’s pos t or so me unpleasant happening in their don Jestic circle. They k how that they* have been thrown off fiheir balance find that reason is unseat’-ed, and sincfj the mind is a very delicately adjust ed piece, of meehanism, aind the min< 1 includes such imponderable qualities I as telepathy—which plays a greater : part in professional gambling than mi fet people realise—they piar light.

"And j ijet the i jon-suparstitiouß pros-

.have their own peculiar superstitions. I was on my way to once with a man who bets in thousands. We .were hardly out bf King’s Cross before he put his hand in- his waistcoat pocket andi tqok out a golden sovereign—this was after the war—and threw it through the open window. “‘What’s the Idea?” I asked. “‘ My brother gave me that for luck. A new mascot always brings bad luck.’ “Perhaps there are no nqnhsuperstitious gamblers after, all I”