Re: Superstitions.

Hi.

Since it's Friday the 13th, I thought I'd ask if there's any users with superstitions.  I personally have a habit of saluting single magpies.  I've a few more, mostly football related.  Anyone else got superstitions?

Paul.

I wouldn't say I have superstitions but on the subject of magpies I have noticed some strange coincidences. A solitary magpie first appeared in the immediate area a couple of years back. On the day I noticed it first venture into next door's garden a very close relative of Mrs Next Door died. That lone magpie has been alone ever since - until last week when one became two. On that day we got some really good news. Like I say, I put it down to being more a coincidence than anything else but it does make you wonder. If there is anything in the old rhyme I certainly don't want to see any more!

I'm not at all superstitious, but out of habit more than anything I often salute a lone magpie and I also 'touch wood'!

Hi all,

Yes I confess too at saluting lone magpies - When I first met my OH, he never knew about this superstition and often looked at me funny when I did it.  One day I saw more than one lone magpie in a space of a couple of hours so was busy saluting each one without realising I was doing it, when in the end he had to ask if I had some sort of OCD!

Hi,

I refuse to walk under ladders, and have only recently cured myself of obsessive saluting of magpies.  I also touch wood, (ie patting my head, although the wife once half killed me for tapping one of the kids....)

Magpies - one for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl and four for a boy!    We had a single magpie in the garden one day and later that day had a knock in the car - my daughter blamed the magpie - I blamed the driver driving too fast down a single country lane!

Never cross knives - otherwise you will have an argument.   If you are given a knife as a present - pay a penny for it otherwise you cut the friendship.   Never give an empty purse - otherwise it will always be empty.  Pearls are for tears. 

Am not that superstitious altho I do tend to make sure knives are uncrossed in the washing up bowl!  Oh! just remembered blue and green should never been seen - unlucky to wear them together but the sky is blue and grass is green?????  Great fun!

I remember my Mum once was given a peacock feather as a present, after politely thanking the person who gave it to her, once they had left she promptly threw it in the bin! 

I was always told never to put shoes on the table and not to open umbrellas indoors! (which are both really quite sensible, if you think about it...)

I remember one of my aunts had a chant whenever she saw an ambulance, it would go along the lines of "Touch your collar and never swallow until you saw a brown dog".  I googled this and apparently it was more common in the east end of London which is where my dad's family orginally came from.

Kezmo

I remember one of my aunts had a chant whenever she saw an ambulance, it would go along the lines of "Touch your collar and never swallow until you saw a brown dog".  I googled this and apparently it was more common in the east end of London which is where my dad's family orginally came from.

This reminds me of something my mother would say whenever she saw an ambulance: "Touch my collar to be a scholar and never to be a patient."

Paul.

Heron77

Hi.

Since it's Friday the 13th, I thought I'd ask if there's any users with superstitions.  I personally have a habit of saluting single magpies.  I've a few more, mostly football related.  Anyone else got superstitions?

 

Paul.

 A bit late in replying to this thread!!!!!!

But some interesting reading!

FRIDAY THE 13TH - how is fear of the number thirteen demonstrated?

More than 80 percent of high-rises lack a 13th floor.

Many airports skip the 13th gate.

Aeroplanes have no 13th aisle.

Hospitals and hotels regularly have no room number 13.

Italians omit the number 13 from their national lottery.

On streets in Florence, Italy, the house between number 12 and 14 is addressed as 12 and a half.

Many cities do not have a 13th Street or a 13th Avenue in France, socialite’s known as the quatorziens (fourteeners) once made themselves available as 14th guests to keep a dinner party from an unlucky fate.

Many triskaidekaphobes, as those who fear the unlucky integer are known, point to the ill-fated mission to the moon, Apollo 13.

If you have 13 letters in your name, you will have the devil's luck. Jack the Ripper, Charles Manson, Jeffrey Dahmer, Theodore Bundy and Albert De Salvo all have 13 letters in their names.

Buzzard

My Mum always told me to NEVER pick up a crows feather, and she wouldn't have a Peacock's feather in the house.

My grandmother would not have white flowers in the house or there would be a death.

My mother would never have images of birds in the house, either in paintings or ornaments, and certainly not as Christmas decorations such as robins on the tree.

Neither would she put portrait photos or paintings of living people on the walls, saying "you only put dead folk on walls"

My ambulance chant was "touch my head and touch my toes, hope never to go in one of those"

My American friends flew over from the US deliberately on a Friday 13th last year because all the flights that day were very cheap - the Americans are more superstitious than us it seems.

I can still never put new shoes on a table, I touch would all the time, and as for ladders - these have to be hired for a penny, never borrowed. But I'm not superstitious!

Hello.

Its been a very good thread this and I'm relieved to find out I'm not the only one who has superstitious tendancies.  One of the things I must admit to is trying to avoid walking under ladders.  I was on a site recently (sorry can't recall the name) and was amazed at the amout of superstitions and beliefs attached to birds and animals throughout the world.  Of course magpies were mentioned and another one I recall was a belief that sparrows are supposed to be reincarnations of deceased humans.  There are many others, some still relevant today and others probably resigned to history.

I'm somewhat surprised to read about the number 13 being conected to superstitions in Italy.  The reason for this is because there was an Itallian centre half who played for Celtic in the mid to late 1990s, called Rico Annoni.  This player choose to wear the number 13 jersey rather than avoid it, as opposed to the tradition in football of avoiding the number 13.  His reason was supposed to be linked to an Italian superstition that states that the number 13 is lucky and the number 17 is unlucky. 

As for the number 13 I remember reading in a horror novel about a house being built with a very small fourteenth step, in order to avoid the "evil number".  Although how much of that was part of the writer's plan to scare and how much was related to American superstition I can't tell.

Paul.