Current Superstitions | Page 6

in a superstition of the present series (I know not how generally observed) Sunday is said to be the day on which the infant is first to be carried into the sunshine. It is likely that such continuing customs represent feeble echoes of pre-Christian dedicatory ceremonies, which in the first instance were themselves founded on a corresponding habit of thought; according to an opposite, yet connected system of notions, we find Protestant Christianity still preserving a memento of the world-old and universal belief in a crowd of malicious spirits, prepared at every moment to take up their residence in the convenient shelter of the human frame, as a hermit crab watches for a suitable shell in which to make his home. It must be owned that the volume of observances connected with infancy, here presented, is very inadequate; it is certain that a nurse of a century ago would have been familiar with a vastly more extensive array of duties and cautions. As we go back in time and culture, action becomes more restricted. Where the effects of any line of conduct are unknown, adherence to precedent is all-important; every part of the life must be administered according to a complicated system of rules, while common prudence is considered as inseparable from religious obligation.
The following section presents us with interesting material, in the exhibition of ideas and customs which are maintained by children themselves, and which they learn from one another rather than from their elders. It is true that these are of necessity the reflection of the conceptions and practice of older persons; but, according to the law of their nature, it is found that children often exhibit a peculiar conservatism, in virtue of which habits of thought still exercise control, which among men and women have been outgrown. This is illustrated in popular games and songs which children have orally preserved; and the same is true of their superstitions. Women, especially, who may peruse this collection will be surprised to find how many of the items here recorded will seem familiar, and at the same time to have received credence; in the case of a particularly clear-minded person, free from any disposition toward credulity, nearly a hundred of these superstitions were remembered. The ideas in question, perhaps at no time more than half believed, have frequently altogether faded into oblivion.
Attention should be paid, also, to the imaginative power of the youthful mind, and the manner in which beliefs are visualized, and appear as realities of perception. To illustrate this principle have been included a few examples belonging rather to individual than to general opinion. The little girl who without any direct instruction imagines that the light of the heaven gleams through the orifices we call stars, who sees celestial beings in meteor form winging their way across the skies, or who is surrounded by the benevolent spirits which her discriminating education, banishing the terrors of the supernatural world, has permitted to exist for her comprehension, illustrates that readiness of fancy and control of vision by expectation which belongs to humanity in the reverse degree of the reflective habit. Herein childish conceptions and vivacity of feeling represent the human faculty which education may control but cannot obliterate.
Beliefs relating to the influence of physiognomy present us with a very limited anthology of popular ideas, which in elaborate developments have been expanded into pseudo-sciences, and fill whole libraries of learned misinformation. These notions may be divided into two classes. On the one hand appear indications founded on natural analogies, as when we still speak of close-fistedness. On the other side, many of these associations are arbitrary, as when the study of spots on the nails is supposed to give means for determining future fortune. Such conclusions depend partly on the correct opinion that in the cradle lies the future man, with all elements of his complex nature, and partly on external marks, the interpretation of which is purely arbitrary.
The chapter on "Projects" presents the reader with a class of usages, sufficiently foolish when considered in themselves, but none the less demanding attention, as exhibiting, in full energy, the survival, at the end of the nineteenth century, of the practice of divination. It is true that these attempts to forecast the future are commonly made in a sportive manner and only with partial belief, being now for the most part reduced to social sports. They belong also almost exclusively to the female sex, who by way of amusement still keep up rites which are to determine the future partner in life. Yet that these observances were formerly performed with sober forethought may be seen by the superstitious character with which in retired districts they are still invested; it is likely that in this limited field we have the final echoes of ceremonies