A certain amount of odium has attached itself to the Puritan fathers of New England, on this account, among unreflecting or ill-natured critics at least, just as if, upon leaving Old England, those people would be expected to leave their superstitions behind them, like so much useless luggage. As a matter of fact, rank superstition was the common inheritance of all peoples of that day and generation, whether Jew or Gentile, Frenchman or Dutchman, Virginian or New Englander. Of its wide prevalence in Old England we find ample proof ready to our hand. For example:
“At Boston, in Lincolnshire, Mr. Cotton being their former minister, when he was gone the bishop desired to have organs set up in the church, but the parish was unwilling to yield; but, however, the bishop prevailed to be at the cost to set them up. But they being newly up (not playing very often with them) a violent storm came in at one window and blew the organs to another window, and brake both organs and window down, and to this day the window is out of reputation, being boarded and not glazed.”2
Still further to show the feeling prevailing in England toward superstition at the time of the settlement of this country, in the historical essay entitled “With the King at Oxford,” we find this anecdote: The King (Charles I.), coming into the Bodleian Library on a certain day, was shown a very curious copy of Virgil. Lord Falkland persuaded his Majesty to make trial of his fortune by thrusting a knife between the leaves, then opening the book at the place in which the knife was inserted. The king there read as follows:—
“Yet let him vexed bee with arms and warres of people wilde,
And hunted out from place to place, an outlaw still exylde:
Let him go beg for helpe, and from his childe dissevered bee,
And death and slaughter vile of all his kindred let him see.”
The narrative goes on to say that the king’s majesty was “much discomposed” by this uncanny incident, and that Lord Falkland, in order to turn the king’s thoughts away from brooding over it, proposed making the trial himself.
We continue to draw irrefragable testimony to the truth of our position from the highest personages in the realm. Again, according to Wallington, Archbishop Laud, arch persecutor of the Puritans, has this passage in his diary: “That on such or such a day of the month he was made archbishop of Canterbury, and on that day, which was a great day of honor to him, his coach and horses sunk as they came over the ferry at Lambeth, in the ferry-boat, and he prayed that this might be no ill omen.”
Our pious ancestors put a good deal of faith in so-called “judgments,” or direct manifestations of the divine wrath toward evildoers, as all readers of Mather’s “Remarkable Providences” well know. But they were by no means alone in such beliefs. It is related of the poet Milton, after he became blind, that the Duke of York (later James II.) asked him if he did not consider the loss of his eyesight as a judgment inflicted upon him for what he had written of the late king. In reply Milton asked the duke, if such afflictions were to be regarded as judgments from heaven, in what manner he would account for the fate of the late king; ... he, the speaker, had only lost his eye, while the king had lost his head.”
John Josselyn, Gent., an Englishman, but no Puritan, who spent some time in New England, chiefly at Scarborough in Maine, published, in 1672, in England, a little book under the title of “New England’s Rarities Discovered.” Some things which Josselyn “discovered” would be rarities indeed to this generation. For instance, he describes the appearance of several prodigious apparitions—all of which has a value in enabling us properly to gauge the tone and temper of popular feeling where the book was written, and where it was published. One of his “rarities” is worth repeating here, if only for the pretty sentiment it embodies. He says of the twittering chimney-swallows, “that when about to migrate they commonly throw down (the chimney) one of their young into the room below, by way of gratitude,” presumably in return for the hospitalities of the house. He then goes on to say, “I have more than once observed that, against the ruin of a family, these birds will forsake the house and come no more.” This comes from a more or less close observer, who himself occupied the relation we desire to establish, namely that of a transplanted Englishman, so thoroughly grounded in old superstition that all the marvels he relates are told with an air of truth quite refreshing.
An amusing instance of how far prevalent superstition can lead astray minds usually enlightened is soberly set forth in Governor Winthrop’s celebrated history. It is a fit corollary to the organ superstition, just narrated.
“Mr. Winthrop the younger, one of the magistrates, having many books in a chamber, where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them one wherein the Greek Testament, the Psalter and the Common Prayer were bound together. He found the Common Prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though there were above a thousand.”
All these superstitious beliefs were solemnly bequeathed by the fathers to their children under the sanction of a severe penal code, together with all the accumulated traditions of their own immediate ancestors. And in some form or other, whether masquerading under some thin disguise or foolish notion, superstition has continued from that day to this. As Polonius says:
“... ’Tis true, ’tis pity;
And pity ’tis ’tis true.”
Although a great many popular beliefs may seem puerile in the extreme, they none the less go to establish the fact to be kept in mind. Since I began to look into the matter I have been most astonished at the number of very intelligent persons who take care to conform to prevailing beliefs in things lucky or the reverse. It is true Lord Bacon tells us that “in all superstitions wise men follow fools.” But this blunt declaration of his has undoubted reference to the schoolmen, and to the monastic legends which were such powerful aids in fostering the growth of superstition as it existed long before Bacon’s time:—
“A bone from a saintly anchorite’s cave,
A vial of earth from a martyrs grave.”
The class of persons just spoken of, is, however, so keenly sensitive to ridicule that only some chance remark betrays their real mental attitude.
With the unlettered it is different. Superstition is so much more prevalent among them that less effort is made at concealment. Perhaps the many agencies at work to put it down have not had so fair a trial in the country as in the city. And yet the recent “Lucky-Box” craze makes it difficult to draw the line. Be that as it may, it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that some rural communities in New England are simply honeycombed with it. Indeed, almost every insignificant happening is a sign of something or other.
One result of my own observation in this field of research is, that women, if not by nature more superstitious than men, hold to these old beliefs much more tenaciously than men. In the country, it is the woman who is ready to quarrel with you, if, in some unguarded moment, you should venture to doubt the potency of her manifold signs. In the city, it is still the woman who presents her husband with some charm or other to be worn on his watch-chain, as a safeguard against disease, inconstancy, late hours, or other uncounted happenings of life, believing, as she does, more or less implicitly, in its traditional efficacy. In all that relates to marriage, too, women are usually most careful how they disregard any of the accepted dicta on a subject of so much concern to their future happiness, as will appear later on.
Fifty years ago the poet Whittier declared that “There is scarcely a superstition of the past three centuries which has not, at this very time, more or less hold upon individual minds among us.” The broad declaration demands less qualification to-day than is generally supposed.
Most of the examples collected in this volume have come under my own observation; some have been contributed by friends, many by the newspapers. If their number should prove a surprise