Black Cats and Evil Eyes (14 page)

This religious source is supported by the first appearance of the superstition in print. In the 1916 novel
The Wonderful Year
by William Locke, a character named Fortinbras lights the cigarettes
of his two companions and uses another for his own:

The shrewd salesmanship of Swedish tycoon Ivar
Kreugar, whose match-making empire dominated post-war production of matches, also helped to cement the belief in the public
consciousness. The financier and businessman, who was found after his suicide to have committed high-level fraud, is thought to have used his international marketing knowhow to help propagate the
myth in order to increase demand for his product and fuelled the fire of this superstition still further.

Thankfully the need for protection against the Black Death waned so long ago that superstitions like this one have been consigned to the history books. The mascots and charms
that many of us still carry around have their roots in a time when people didn’t just use them for good luck, but because they hoped they might save their lives. It is a challenge in the
modern age to imagine what life must have been like during the great plagues of medieval and Renaissance Europe. Overcrowding, extreme poverty and the lack of clean water or proper sanitation
systems meant that life was precarious even before the arrival of a deadly epidemic. Once the bubonic plague arrived, carried by
rats and passed to humans via flea bites, it
swept through entire populations, killing 70 per cent of its victims within two to seven days.

The Great Plague of London, which struck in 1665, killed between 75,000 and 100,000 people, representing almost a quarter of the city’s population. It was the last in a string of plague
epidemics that began in 1499 so people knew all about the horrors that lay ahead. In their desperation to avoid contagion, most who could afford to fled the city, leaving the poor in the decrepit,
rat-infested slums that were the hotbed of the disease. Those left behind leapt on anything that offered the chance of protection; as journalist Daniel Defoe describes in his 1722 fiction
A Journal
of the Plague Year
there was a craze for ‘charms, philtres, exorcisms, amulets, and I know not what preparations against the plague; as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of
possession of an evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures written on them, as particularly
the word Abracadabra, formed in a triangle or pyramid.’

Other methods documented at the time included painting a red cross on the door of infected houses with the words ‘Lord have mercy upon us’; the application of a recently killed
pigeon to the buboes (grossly enlarged lymphatic glands) or the tying of a frog around the neck to draw out the disease.

Defoe’s words sum up the futility of their efforts: ‘The poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead carts and
thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks.’

Flowers have been imbued with historical and religious significance for thousands of years and the lily appears in folklore dating back to antiquity.
According to Greek legend the flower was formed from drops of the Goddess Hera’s spilt breast milk and was a symbol of purity and fecundity. Lilies were woven together with ears of wheat to
form crowns worn by brides at marriage ceremonies where they represented their innocence and blessed their fertility. In Roman tradition, lilies were presented to young women by their suitors
during the celebration of the spring solstice, and Slavic pagan mythology also has the lily as a symbol of fertility and new life where they were ritually given as gifts at the spring celebration
of Ostara, the time of renewal, which eventually became the Christian Easter.

According to Christian legend, lilies sprang from Eve’s tears when she and Adam were banished from the garden of Eden. Borrowing from the earlier mythology linking the lily to motherhood
and purity, they are also associated with
the Virgin Mary and are said to represent her tears. Early paintings depicting the annunciation show the Archangel Gabriel handing
Mary lilies as he tells her she is expecting the son of God, and St Thomas was said to have found lilies in place of Mary’s body in her tomb after she ascended to heaven. The flower was also
said to have sprung from drops of Jesus’s sweat in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before the crucifixion, which made them symbolic of the Resurrection. Lilies can often still be seen
decorating churches at Easter.

At Roman burials a lily was placed in the hands of the deceased to signify rebirth. This tradition was adopted by the early Church, which eventually appropriated the flower as a Christian symbol
of death, and it is from this that the superstition about them bringing bad luck if brought into the home derives.

Many readers might view this one as less of a superstition and more of a self-defence measure, since hell is widely known to have no fury like a pregnant woman denied the
midnight snack her heart desires. However, this
superstition began with the belief that if a woman was made to go without the food she craved, her baby might be
‘marked’.

The 1507 translation of medieval manuscript the
Distaff Gospels
includes the opinions of two wise women on this subject: ‘I tell you also that when you are with a married woman who could
have children or who is pregnant . . . God and reason forbid talking about any food which could not be found at that time if needed, in order that her baby does not have a mark on the body.’
A second testimony to this superstition comes from Lady Abonde du Four who claims that if cherries, strawberries or red wine are thrown in the face of a pregnant woman, the child will have marks on
the body.

This latter view reflects medieval beliefs in ‘Maternal Impression’ where experiences the mother has during pregnancy were thought to be visible on the child after its birth. Some
American folklore suggests that birthmarks could be found on parts of the body that suffered injuries in a past life, while Iranian mythology states that a mark can appear on an unborn child when
its mother touches a part of her own body during a solar eclipse.

However, the unsatisfied cravings theory was most widely believed to be the cause and the naming of birthmarks in several languages reflects this. In Italian they’re called
‘
voglie
’, in Spanish they are known as ‘
antojos
’ and in Arabic ‘
wiham
’, all of which can be roughly translated as ‘wishes’, since they symbolized the
unfulfilled wishes of the child’s mother as she carried the unborn child.

The elder tree is revered in pagan folklore for its magical powers and its ability to ward off evil. As a symbol of the natural cycle of life, death and
rebirth, its blossom was worn at the May fire festival of Beltane and its branches were used for blessings. It was also an important source of herbal medicine, and its flowers, bark and berries
were all used in restorative remedies. Countryside tradition held that it was unlucky to cut down an elder, perhaps because of the early European folktale that it was home to a tree spirit, or
dryad called Hylde-moer, who would haunt anyone who chopped the tree down. People were particularly careful to avoid using it to make cradles, as one legend said that Hylde-moer would visit any
child laid in a cradle made from her wood and pinch it black and blue. Branches of elder, though, were often cut down and hung over doorways to keep evil spirits at bay and it is only according to
Christian legend that bringing elder inside is unlucky.

Christian distrust of Druid customs may have fuelled fear of the elder and during the Middle Ages it was viewed with suspicion by many because of its association with magic
and witchcraft. As well as its use in medicine it was also used to make witches’ wands. It was said to be the tree that Judas hanged himself from and was sometimes referred to as the
‘Death Tree’ because its earlier associations with rebirth meant that it was often used at funerals. (
See
Never Bring Lilies Indoors
.) It was also thought unlucky to smell the tree or
to sleep beneath one.

Fruit cake has been central to Christmas tradition for centuries; its first incarnation was as a plum porridge eaten on Christmas Eve in preparation for a day of fasting
on Christmas Day. Over time wheat flour replaced the oatmeal of the original recipe and butter, sugar and eggs were added, as were endless rituals surrounding its preparation.
Stirring was a crucial aspect and everyone in the household had to have a turn, even small babies would have their hands held to the spoon to guarantee good luck, and all the stirring had to be
clockwise. This rule has nothing to do with the Christian celebration of Christmas; rather, it has its roots in a mistrust of anything moving in an anti-clockwise direction inherited from ancient
sun worshipping religions.

Stirring anti-clockwise or ‘widdershins’ as it was called, was said to go against nature because it was against the direction of the sun as it moved through the sky. The significance
of the sun and its trajectory was enormous in early religion and many remnants of sun-worship remained in the countryside lore by which many people lived, even long after Christianity replaced
paganism as the dominant belief system.

Some of the mistrust of moving in a circle ‘widdershins’ came from the fact that it was said to be used in witchcraft to summon the Devil and to set spells and curses in motion. A
Yorkshire legend states that dancing ‘widdershins’ nine times around a ring of toadstools would put your life in the hands of the fairies. There were Christian reasons to fear it too,
however, given that it might attract the attention of the Devil and it was considered an omen of death to walk ‘widdershins’ round a churchyard on the way to a funeral.

Many traditions of Christmas cake-making remain even now, though these days we tend to eat it throughout the holiday period, including on the fasting-turned-gorging festival that is Christmas
Day.

The modern world has become so distanced from death in the present age that it is hard to imagine feeling an urge to touch a corpse, except perhaps that
of a loved one in the moments just after death. Funeral homes and mortuaries are a recent development in human history and for thousands of years the bodies of the recently deceased were kept at
home until the time of their burial. During this time it was customary for friends and more distant family members to ‘view the body’, and while they viewed it they often touched it
too.