Black Cats and Evil Eyes (7 page)

Among them is this still commonly held belief that giving a knife or a pair of scissors as a gift will result in the bonds between the giver and the receiver being severed.
The Distaff Gospels
put it like this: ‘If a man offers a knife to his mistress as a New Year’s gift, you should know that their love will cool off.’

The only antidote to this was for the recipient to give a coin in return. This was seen to count as ‘payment’ for the knife and ensured that it wasn’t technically a gift. All
early references to the belief focus on knives, but by the early 1700s the superstition had extended to include scissors, which were also believed to have the power to cut ties between people,
their friends and their fortunes. (
See also
It Is Bad Fortune to Use Scissors on New Year’s Day
.)

We all like a superstition that presents the possibility that something beneficial might be coming our way and the modern version of this belief allows for a bit of optimism:
if your left palm itches, you will soon receive money. Perhaps as a result of our desire for good news, combined with the fact that this is a superstition based simply on an observation rather than
an action, it has stood the test of
time, though few of us pay much heed to an itch on the right palm, which is said to indicate the imminent loss of a substantial sum.

Some sources suggest that the origin of this belief lies with the Anglo-Saxon practice of rubbing diseased skin with silver to cure it. The first documented use of silver in medicine dates back
to the eighth century, when silver filings were used to purify blood and ease heart palpitations and by the twelfth century, the word ‘silver’ had evolved from the Old English
‘seolfor’ and it was being used widely for medicinal purposes. Modern scientists now understand the anti-bacterial qualities of the silver ion and it is still used in wound dressings,
especially since the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections like MRSA.

However, while we consider an itchy left palm a lucky thing, our Elizabethan forefathers saw it as a curse, linking it to greed and covetousness. Even if the money flowed in, the desire for
money, which they believed was indicated by an itching palm, was seen as a very bad quality. In Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
, Brutus observes: ‘Let me tell you Cassius, you yourself are
much condemned to have an itching palm.’

While we certainly prize wealth in the modern age, we also recognize the perils of preoccupying greed, and though we don’t think of an itching palm as a sign of avarice, we do still say
‘he’s got itchy palms’ of people whom we suspect of trying to swindle money out of us.

Candles have been associated with spiritual activity since pre-Christian times. They were used in pagan ceremonies and the late Egyptians used them in magical rituals in which
they stared into the flame before sleep in the hope of seeing the truth in their dreams. By the twelfth century candles had become part of religious tradition and began to appear on church altars
and in blessings. Within the Catholic Church they were also used in rituals designed to exorcize demons, and it was this association with the spirit world that gave rise to the belief that a flame
would go out in the presence of evil.

A candle spluttering out during a ceremony was said to indicate the presence of a malign spirit, especially on All Hallows Eve, when evil spirits were thought to roam freely. In East Anglia,
where Halloween was known as ‘Lating Night’, candles were traditionally lit by villagers just before midnight and carried though the fields and common lands. If the flames guttered and
the candles died out, evil was
afoot; if they went on burning steadily, the villagers could rest in the knowledge that they’d escaped a haunting.

The power of the candle against dark forces was cemented by their inclusion in the list of weaponry prescribed by the Dominican prior and inquisitor Heinrich Kramer, whose treatise on witchcraft
and how to repel it became a handbook for the witch-hunters of the Middle Ages.

Later, a candle was customarily placed at the bedside of the sick to keep demons at bay and if it burned blue, it was taken to mean that a ghost had entered the room, perhaps to escort the soul
of the dying person to the next realm. If it sputtered out for no apparent reason, it was taken as a sign that the patient was about to pass away. A candle is also often left in a room after
someone has died, but this is where European and American folklore diverge. In the US it is considered unlucky to leave a candle burning in a room in which there is no living guardian of the flame,
some saying it invites the death of a friend or relative.

This superstition is still recited often today if someone feels a burning sensation in either their cheeks or ears. The nature of the words being spoken about you varies in
some interpretations: some say a burning on the left side means someone is speaking ill of you, while on the right means you’re being praised. In Pennsylvania if both sides burn it’s
said to mean two people are arguing over you.

All versions have their roots in early superstitions about witchcraft and the ability of wise women to cast spells on people. ‘Cheek burning’, as it was known in the Middle Ages, was
an indication that some sort of magical influence was at work on the sufferer, so this counter-curse was recited to rebuff the spell:

A curse like this would usually have been made only by women, so the final line was included in case the spell had been cast by a witch at the request of the afflicted woman’s sweetheart
hoping to make her fall more deeply in love with him, in which case she would gladly allow the magic to do its work.

As belief in the power of witchcraft lessened, the phrase was used to refer to people who might be criticizing the sufferer and several less potent antidotes were devised. The Pennsylvanian
solution was to bite the corner of your apron, which was said to make back-biters bite their tongues. A more widespread American custom was to lick the tip of your finger and press it on the
burning cheek while reciting the names of anyone you suspected; the guilty party was the one whose name was on your lips when you felt your cheek grow cool.

We’re all familiar with the sensation: you might be merrily chatting away about some inconsequential thing or other when suddenly you shudder, icy fingers creep up your
spine and your skin tingles. ‘Ooh!’ you might exclaim, ‘someone’s just stepped on my grave.’ Few of us actually believe it, but when the phrase was first in use
– by at least 1738 when it first appeared in print in Simon Wagstaff’s
A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation
– they really meant it (Wagstaff was one of many
aliases of the satirist Jonathan Swift). The saying comes from an earlier legend that the site of your future grave was pre-determined, and that if someone walked over the place where that grave
would one day be, you would feel a deathly chill and shiver in response.

This notion relied on the medieval acceptance of fate or destiny. It wasn’t until the Renaissance that the concept of individualism began to take root and people started to believe that
they could change the course of their lives, who they would become, and where and how they might die.
Most people living in the Middle Ages believed that their life paths were
predetermined by God and that their final resting place was therefore set. They also believed that the veil between the living world and the afterlife was thin and porous, allowing spirits, and
prophetic sensations, to move freely between the two.

As time went on the phrase spread to America and became established in the legend-rich Appalachian Mountain region. Soon variations began to appear; by the turn of the twentieth century a Welsh
version held that the shiver was caused by a donkey walking over the grave, while in Newfoundland it was a goose. This latter version is thought to be an example of a kind of retrospective
modification: the shiver induced goose bumps, or gooseflesh, so, gradually, a goose took the place of a person in the phrase. Then, when people began to wonder about the origins of words and
phrases, they found themselves asking ‘which came first, the goose or the gooseflesh?’

Many death omens date back to before the scientific revolution of the Renaissance, but this one is comparatively recent. It wasn’t until the late sixteenth century that
clocks began to appear in people’s homes; before then early mechanical clocks were used in church bells (the word ‘clock’ comes from the French word ‘cloche’, meaning
bell), which were the only means, aside from the movement of the sun, for people to tell the time. In Tudor times it was only the wealthy who could afford a complex time-piece and for most people,
working in the daylight hours and resting at dusk was as accurate as they needed to be with their time-keeping.

Grandfather clocks were becoming popular in the homes of the rich by the middle of the seventeenth century but it wasn’t until the mid-eighteenth century that
mechanical clocks were a regular feature of ordinary homes. These early clocks needed regular winding to keep time and the winding mechanisms were vulnerable to damage. Over-winding or winding the
wrong way could cause the workings of the chime to become unsynchronized or cause the clock to stop completely. To many people, this seemed a sinister sign: having relied for so many generations on
the position of the sun to tell the time, the notion that time might stop was alarming. A stopped clock was associated with a life at its end and if one that had long been silent suddenly chimed,
it was taken as a message from beyond the grave that a death was imminent.

A book written by the American minister Reverend Samuel Watson in 1873 called
The Clock Struck One, and Christian Spiritualist: Being a Synopsis of the Investigations of Spirit Intercourse by an
Episcopal Bishop, Three Ministers, Five Doctors, and Others, at Memphis, Tenn
. illustrates how seriously the superstition was taken. As its curious title suggests, the book is a collection of what
we might now call ‘paranormal’ events, including several accounts of old clocks striking just before a death, including before the deaths of Watson’s wife and two of his
children.

‘It is popular with some people to ridicule facts when they have no evidence of disproving them, or argument to overthrow them,’ Watson writes. ‘There are many things occurring
equally “singular and mysterious” but people do not like to be called “superstitious” and hence rarely mention them.’