An Old Superstition

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 17, 23 April 1903, Page 2

An Old Superstition

A curious story of the recent storm is told by a Dublin solicitor. 'He lives,' says the ' Freeman.' 'in No. 13 in. a well-known street, and has for neighbors right and left, a couple of friends who " wouldn't live in a house numbered 13 for any money." On Friday morning the solicitor, who had slept right through the cyclone, went across the street to see what damage had been done to his house. He was seen crossing back again with a smile on his face. There was not the slightest trade of damage on No. 13 ; while No. 12 and No. 14 were in a state of utter wreck." ' * The superstition of lucky and unlucky numbers is as old as it is silly. Most of those popular fancies about good and evil luck are the tattered rags of paganism which ill-instructed persons bear about them still. Thcv come down from pre-Christian days, and Latin and Greek literature is studded with them. It is a far cry back to Pythagoras. But, in his ' Pentad,' he lavs stress upon the vntues of numbers one, three, and five, and the e\ils that are supposed to lurk in two, 'the symbol of diversity' Long ages afteiwaids, Shakespeare echoed the sentiment, when, in his ' lieny Wnos of Windsor,' he made fat old Falstafl say : ' There is divinity in odd numbei s, whether in nativity, chance, or death.' Christianity waged a war that still continues against those pagan fancies, and has enormously lessened the detestable influence which they ome exercised upon the human mind Samuel Butler l allied the I'untans of his day upon their simple faith in lucky numbei s and in the horse-shoe as a charm against witches, and poked gentle fun at them with an alleged ancient instance — ' Augustus, ha"wng b oversight Put on his left shoe 'fore his i lght, Had like to have been slam that day By soldiers mutiny'ng for pa> ' Lecky has remarked in one of his works that periods of decay of religious faith are commonly marked by a high degree of credulity and superstition And, as a matter of fact, one of the curious features ol this age of sneering scepticism is the boundless creduhtv with vvhuh men who have 'emancipated' themselves from tho iestraints of Christianity, cling to a faith in lucky -md unlucky numbers and circumstances, and to other supeistitions that have no connection with religion Zola was probably about the most thoiough-going and swinishminded of the ' emancipated ' neo-pagans of our tune A few years ago he took the public into his confidence with regard to a swarm of superstitious practices to which he was enslaved. His superstitious fear of number seven was. for instance, an overmastering dread No matter how urgent or important an undertaking might be, lie would not begin it on the seventh day of any month. And this was the man who spent a great pait of his life in railing at the ' superstition ' of people who believed in personal responsibility to a great Creatoi. in anoial homes, and in clean, Christian lives !

A practical pi otest against a popular and widelyprevalent 'unlucky number ' superstition is the periodical clerical meeting that is held in Pans under the title of i the thirteen dinner.' It is the quiet and frugal reunion

of a society of -a baker's dozen of Catholic ecclesiastics who selected this mode of combating the prevalent idea as to the fatal ill-luck that is supposed to dog the footsteps of some one of any group of thirteen persons who sit down together to table.