Black Cats and Evil Eyes (9 page)

So it seems likely that the idea was adopted into British culture directly from translations of early Greek poetry. Over time the blister became a less specific burning sensation, and the
superstition spread to the US. ‘The Despot’s Song’, published anonymously in Baltimore in 1862 by an author opposed to the Union government uses the idea to discredit the then
President Abraham Lincoln, to whom he gives the lines:

Superstitions tend to cluster around the most significant moments in life, which is why there are so many surrounding birth, death and marriage. The start of married life, like
the start of the New Year, was said to determine how successful the union would be, so newlyweds traditionally followed all sorts of wedding-day customs designed to ensure a happy life together,
many of which continue to this day. There was one superstitious act, though, that the bride carried out in secret: to keep her new husband faithful she would sew the feather of a swan into his
pillow.

Placing items inside or under pillows was traditionally seen as a way of influencing a person’s behaviour or wellbeing. Anyone afraid of being bewitched would place a
knife beneath their pillow to keep witches away and it was thought that sleeping with a carefully selected posy of flowers beneath your pillow would allow you to dream of your future spouse. These
beliefs mirrored ancient African witchcraft customs, in which ‘voodoo’ charms like bones, hair, rags or strings placed under a pillow were said to cause sleeplessness or even death
through so-called ‘Pillow Magic’.

The significance of the swan’s feather in ensuring fidelity came from the bird’s reputation in folklore for faithful love, founded on the fact that, unlike most other birds and
animals, they mate for life. Swans appear in the legends of many cultures; one of the oldest is from India about a nymph, Urvasi, who fell in love with a mortal man, Puruvaras, and pledged to stay
with him as long as she never saw him naked. A god, envious of their love, tricked Puruvaras into breaking her condition and Urvasi was forced to flee from him. Loyal Puruvaras searched endlessly
for her and finally found her swimming with other nymphs in the guise of swans. Some versions say she refused to return to him, others that he was granted immortality to remain with her forever.
Parallel tales can be found in Egyptian and Roman mythology and in legends from Greenland, Eastern Siberia and Ireland, where they were said to be bewitched maidens, or carriers of the souls of
women who had died as virgins. Later, portrayals of their devotion in Wagner’s operas
Parsifal
and
Lohengrin
and Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet
Swan Lake
cemented the
swan’s image as an emblem of devotion.

A reference to this superstition can be found in the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder’s
Natural History
, from the first century
AD
.
‘There is no one . . . who does not dread being spell-bound by means of evil imprecations; and hence the practice, after eating eggs or snails, of immediately breaking the shells, or piercing
them with the spoon.’

Although belief in witchcraft reached its height in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women had been being persecuted for practising magic since Roman times, not for their association
with the Devil, as was the case in the witch hunts of the Middle Ages, but for practising outside the strict control of the Roman government, which relied on certain kinds of magic but outlawed any
that it deemed a threat to its power.

It seems that the Romans believed witches might use intact eggshells to cast spells on the people who’d eaten them, and by 1486 this suspicion had been documented by the Catholic
inquisitor Heinrich Kramer in his infamous witch-hunt manual
Malleus Maleficarum
(‘Hammer of Witches’):

Others held that a shell could be used in the same way as a voodoo doll to inflict pain on whoever had eaten it by piercing them with pins, but by the late sixteenth century people had begun to
speak out against the torture and killing of women accused of witchcraft. Among them was English MP Reginald Scot, who set out to prove that witchcraft did not exist by documenting the methods
inquisitors claimed were used by witches and showing that they were simply tricks of the mind. His 1854 book
Discoverie of Witchcraft
mentions the belief that witches would use eggshells as
boats and simulate rough seas with them to cause shipwrecks. Despite his efforts to illustrate the fallacy of this accusation, many people continued to believe that shells could be used by witches
either to enact storms or to literally carry them out to sea to create havoc in the waves. Piercing a hole in the shell or crushing it completely was the only remedy.

Graveyards have been the subject of superstition since burial rites were first performed for the dead. In ancient cultures the rituals surrounding burial grounds were, of
course, regarded as dutiful rather than superstitious and this particular belief may have originated from a blending of the practical with the spiritual. Although they had no notion of the way in
which infectious disease could be passed through the air, the smell of decomposing bodies made people wary of breathing in the vapours emitted by a corpse, so covering the mouth became customary.
On the spiritual level, early man associated the breath with the life force, or soul, as a result of simply observing that the spirit seemed to leave the body with the exhalation of the final
breath.

The soul is linked with the breath linguistically too:
pneuma
is an ancient Greek word for breath and is translated in religious contexts as ‘spirit’ or
‘soul’. The English word spirit comes from the Latin word
spiritus
, which means breath, and in Hindu philosophy the word
prana
means breath, but also ‘life
force’. It stood to reason in their minds that just as the spirit could be exhaled from the body of someone on their deathbed, that soul might then be inhaled into the body of a living
person.

Over time, beliefs like these were incorporated into folklore and compounded by stories of ghosts and possession by evil spirits. Graveyards were believed to be full of the spirits of the dead,
either returning to communicate with their loved ones or trapped in limbo as a result of their earthly sins. Since it was thought to be more common for the spirits of the sinful to loiter around
graveyards (the good spirits being happily ensconced in Heaven), the chances of becoming possessed by an evil soul were greater and certainly worth holding your breath to avoid.

This is one of the most commonly recited superstitions of our age and the evidence suggests that it is of comparatively recent origin, as umbrellas weren’t widely used
until the nineteenth century. Fans of speculation and conjecture might appreciate the following unverified offer of explanation: the earliest umbrellas were used as sunshades rather than to keep
the rain off and in ancient Egypt, where such parasols were used for this purpose, ceiling-less temples were constructed for the worship of the sun gods. Some sources have it that raising an
umbrella inside such a temple was a direct affront to the gods and a rejection of the sun’s blessing, for which there was a hefty price to pay.

As there is no documentary evidence of this belief in the numerous collections of superstitions made in the years between the fall of the ancient civilizations and the nineteenth century, it
seems that an alternative explanation
is more likely, if less beguiling. One of these is the possibility that the umbrella, along with other upturned items in the home
including lucky horseshoes hung in the open-end-up position (
see
Horseshoes
), could be used as resting places for mischievous fairies and pixies. Some word-of-mouth reports of this
superstition include stories of goblins living in folded umbrellas who might be released into the home if you opened one indoors, and these kinds of superstition were commonly handed down through
the generations with small modifications to allow them to fit the living arrangements of the day.

The exact nature of the misfortune due to rain down on you if you do open an umbrella inside varies from era to era and place to place. These days it’s mostly just considered ‘bad
luck’, but in the late 1800s opening one and holding it directly above your head was said to be a sign of a forthcoming death. A version of the superstition that appeared in a compendium of
American folklore published two decades ago suggests that by opening an umbrella beneath a roof, the guilty party forfeits the protection that the house has to offer. Most superstitious homeowners
took care to ensure that their house was protected from the influence of evil spirits through the placement of a talisman or ‘lucky’ charm at the entrance, but opening an umbrella
within it created a kind of independent realm, existing under its own jurisdiction and lacking the blessings required to keep you safe within it.

This is another of those bad-luck beliefs that even the most rationally minded among us are still haunted by today. Moving into a new home, starting a new job or getting
married on Friday 13th are all considered unlucky and many of us would openly admit to doing our best to avoid them. These days, when we hang onto a belief of this kind, we tend to think of it as
being rooted in something so ancient it’s not our place to question it. And yet this most deeply engrained superstition can’t be found in documentary evidence any earlier than the
mid-twentieth century. It seems instead to be a relatively modern combination of two much older beliefs. The first is that Friday is an unlucky day. Records of this can be found in print from the
fourteenth century, including in Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
published around 1390, and all sources are agreed that it stems from the Christian belief that the Crucifixion of Jesus took
place on a Friday. Since the early Christian Church, Good Friday has been
marked by fasting and prayers in commemoration of Jesus’s death and is followed by celebrations
of his resurrection on Easter Sunday. Friday has since been regarded as the most unlucky day of the week and it was seen as foolish to start any piece of work, do household chores or set out on a
journey on a Friday. (
See
A Bed Changed on Friday Will Bring Bad Dreams
.)