Superstitons live on today in many common gesters and actions. Do you still avoid walking under a ladder? or touch wood to avoid misfortune? Underlying these irratioinal belifes are centuries of long forgotten ways of thought that once inspired or terrified out ancestors. Many of these affect us still today.
by E. and M.A. Radford
During the roman festival of the dead, held in may, black beans were used in ceremonies intended to placate the ward off ghosts, and in early Greek ritual, the scapegoat who annually died for the people was chosen by means of a black bean drawn in a lottery. in his Remaines of Gentilisme and judausme (1686/7) Aubrey mentions a charm used in his boyhood to avert evil spirits, which consisted in saying very quickly, three times in one breath.
A very widespred country belief that persisted at least as late as the end of last century, and perhaps later, was that souls of the dead dwelt in the flowers of the broad bean. these flowers are still thought to be ill-omemed in ,amy districts. Ols colliers in northern and midland England say that sccidents in the pit occur more frequently when they are in bloom than at any other time. Cases of lunacy are also thought more likely then, for the scent of the flowers is supposed to induce mental disorder, bad dreams, and terrifying visions. A Leicestershire tradition says that id any one sleeps all night in a beanfield, he will suffer from appalling nightmares, and will probubly go mad afterwards. Another very common Superstion is that if ina row of beans one should come up white, it is a death omen for someone in the grower's family.
A well known charm for curing warts is to rub them with the white inner lining of a bean-pod, and then throw the pod away, or bury it in a secret place. As it rots, the warts will disappear. This charm has been tried with success in Oxfordshire within the last ten years. In Ierland, poultices made from the flowers are somrtimes used to reduce hard swellings. A former use for the plant, half medical in origin and half magical, was to make women beautiful. The pods steeped in wine and vinigar, or the distilled water of the flowers, improved the complexion, and so, according to Bulleynes's Book of simples (1562) did a lotion made from bean-meal mixxed with cold milk.
In leao year, broad beans are said to grow the wrong way up. Various dates are given in diffrent districts as the only fortunate days for setting beans(and peas) but these seem to spring less from superstion than from agricultural customs and knowledge of local weather conditions. In the northern counties gardeners should
that is, on 1 and 2 March, the festival days of St David and St Chad. Farther south, beans are set "when the elm leaves are as big as a farthing" or on certain dates in early May, often connected with local fairs. A limit to the variety of these days seems to be set by a well known rhyme which says
BLOOD: Primative people in most parts of the world believied that blood was something more than a natural fluid necessary to continue life and strength. They regarded it as the seat or vechicle of the soul, the life-essence. If a man lost any, he was spiritually as well as materially impoverished, and if too much flowed from him, he died because his soul passed out of him with the blood. Power rested in it, so that it could be used in magical or religious rites, and it was believed to have a vitality of its own which persisted even after it had been separated from the parent body.
These archaic notions coloured many long lived superstitions are customs. When blood was shed untimely, especially innocent blood, it brought a curse with it. Where it fell, grass would not grow. Numerous stories are still told of indelible blood stains that cannot be washed out, no matter how often they are scrubbed or scraped. Always they return to give silent testimony of the crime committed there. In some tales of this kind, it is not the floor or the ground which cannot be cleansed, but the actual weapon which with the deed was done. at one time, it was widley believed that a murdered corpse would bleed if touched by the murderer or even if he came near it. The dead man's eyes might be closed to earthly sights and feelings, but his soul-blood recognised the slayer and gushed out to acuse him.
A very persistent belief was that a witch's power could be broken by drawinh his or her blood. "Scoring above the breath", that is, drawing blood by scratching above the nose or mouth, was a common practice in the heyday of the witch-belief, resorted to not only by angry mobs but also, on more than one occasion, by constables and others in authority.
Faith in this charm was responsible for many assaults upon suspected persons, long after witchcraft had ceased to be a legal crime. In 1823, three women were charged at Taunton with injuring Anne Burges, of Wiveliscombe, by tearing her arms with large iron nails, and making fifteen or sixteen serious cuts upon them. This they did in the presence of a number of people who presumably shared their ideas, since they made no effort to rescue the victim. The women's defence was that Anne Burges had bewitched one of them, and that they had been advised by a Devonshire wiseman to draw her blood in order to break the spell.
In the middle ages, when lwprosy was still a danger in Britan, it could be cured by washing in the blood of children or maidens, or by standing under a gallows and allowing the hangman's blood to drop upon the stricken person. various forms of 1st aid were used to stop bleeding in the days when housewives had to depend more upon their own knowledge than upon that of doctorsand chemists. A thick black cobweb might be laid upon thr cut or powdered bistort sprinkled upon it. Sometimes a puff ball was put into the wound, or the bruised roots of comfrey were bound upon it. In Northamptoshire, a pellucid vitrified stone called kitkat was often applied. If all these failed, recourse might be had to magical charms, of which there were many, handed down from mother to daughter, or preserved by the local wisewomen or sunning-man. In Susannah Averty's household book, complied in 1688, we read thatt if the word Veronica is written in ink on the ball of the left thumb "it will in a very short time stop ye bleeding". Another remedy was to say over a cut,
THere is more to come, so check back for more odd little details about superstitions. And how they came to be. ~Dravet
