Current Superstitions | Page 7

employed to determine action and to supply means for the estimation of every species of good or evil fortune. Among these customs a considerable part may be of relatively recent origin, but a number are undoubtedly ancient.
Particularly remarkable is the word by which in the English folk-lore of America, at least, these practices seem to have been popularly entitled. Dictionaries give no aid in explaining the signification of the word "project," here used in the sense of a ceremony of divination. I cannot offer any explanation as to the probable antiquity of the term; neither middle-Latin nor Romance languages seem to offer parallels. One might guess that if all were known, the use might be found to proceed from the special language of medi?val magic or astrology (perhaps mirror-divination).
With practices of this sort has been connected an incident of colonial history. During the accusations brought against alleged witches of Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692, the chief agents were a group of "children" belonging to a particular neighborhood of that town. It has been asserted that these young persons, previous to the outbreak of the excitement, formed a "circle" of girls in the habit of meeting for the purpose of performing "magical tricks" (to use a phrase employed by Cotton Mather), and that it was experience so acquired that fitted them for the part afterwards played in the trials. This statement has been repeated by so many recent writers as to become a commonplace of accepted history; it would seem, however, that the representation depends on the invention of a modern essayist, who transferred to the colonial period ideas derived from his acquaintance with the phenomena of contemporary spiritualistic séances, and that the habit of "trying projects," no doubt universal in colonial times, had nothing to do with the delusion in question. (See note, p. 153.)
Ancient popular divination would, as a matter of course, have taken a ritual character, and been associated especially with particular seasons. It is therefore more than an accident, that many of these harmless observations seem especially connected with Halloween. The Day of All Saints, of which name our English title is a translation, precedes that of All Souls; for the institution and significance of both the church has its explanation. Yet this account is not the correct one: these feasts descend, not from any Christian ecclesiastical ordination, but from an ancient festival of the dead; they represent the survival of a celebration which probably consisted in the bestowing on the departed, after the ingathering of the harvest, his share of the fruits of the ground, conveyed by direct material administration. That at such a period spirits of the dead should be supposed to walk the earth, would be a matter of course; in early time these would be conceived as returning in order to behold and join the sacred dances of the tribe. Accordingly, there seem to be indications showing an original association of some of these usages with the lower world; such may be the significance of the backward movement, or the inversion of garments, occasionally recommended. In order to put one's self in connection with the world of darkness, it is essential to reverse the procedure which is proper for the realm of light. This principle, appearing in medi?val magic, could also be illustrated from savage custom. It can hardly be doubted that the limitation of such forecasts to the field of choosing partners for life is but a survival of an older practice, in which divinations of fortune in other directions also were sought; on the day sacred to the dead, it may be that the latter, as having power and knowledge, were invoked to act as illuminators. The stress laid on dreams appears to imply a practice of evoking spirits, whether of the deceased or of the living.
In the division entitled "Love and Marriage" we are dealing not with ceremonies, but "signs;" in the former case a voluntary action is implied in the consulter of fate; in the latter, the subject is passive. The word "signs" is a popular term for omens of any kind; in this case we cannot be in error in seeking a Latin derivation, signum being classically used in this sense. Here, again, the prognostics in question are respected only by women, and at the present time, with but a light admixture of genuine credulity, unless among people of secluded districts, retaining old-world notions. Foolish as are these ideas of sequence, they indicate a habit of association anciently prevalent, which in early times had the most serious consequences.
The gathering of expectations relating to "Wishes" shows that the name and idea of folk-lore must not be limited to primitive beliefs, or to the ideas of uneducated persons. The assumption that an occurrence, neither unusual nor characterized by any correspondent quality,