The Myths and Fables of To-Day. Drake Samuel Adams

hair will grow better if cut on the waxing of the moon. This notion is probably based on the symbolism of the moon’s waxing and waning, as associated with growing and declining nature.

      A Newfoundland fisherman to-day spits on the first piece of silver given him for luck. In the Old Country this was also a common practice among the lower class of hucksters, upon receiving the price of the first goods sold on that day, which they call “hansell.”10 Boxers often spit into their hands before engaging in a set-to, as also did the schoolboys of my own age, who thought it a charm to prevent the master’s ferule from hurting them as much as it otherwise would, but later found out their mistake.

      In some country districts the belief still holds that if a live frog can be passed through a sick cow the animal will get well, but the frog must be alive and kicking, or the charm will not work.

      Salt was formerly the first thing taken into a new house, in the belief that the occupants would never want for bread in that house.

      “Happy is the corpse that the rain rains on.” This is a sort of corollary to the belief, that it is a fortunate sign if the sun shines on a newly wedded couple.

      The long established custom of laying the head of the dead to the east is probably a survival of the ancient sun-worship. It is traced back to the Phœnicians. In Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline” we find this reference to it: —

      “We must lay his head to the east:

      My father hath reason for’t.”

      We are reminded that ropes are coiled, cranks turned, and eggs beaten with the sun. One writer upon Folk-lore11 remarks that passing the bottle at table from right to left, instead of being merely proper form, really comes from this ancient superstition.

      Telling the bees of a death in the family was formerly a quite general practice, if indeed it has entirely died out. I know that it has been practised in New England within my own recollection. It was the belief that a failure to so inform the bees would lead to their dwindling away and dying, according to some interpreters, or to their flying away, according to others. The manner of proceeding was to knock with the house-key three times against the hives, at the same time telling the noisy inmates that their master or mistress, as the case might be, was dead. One case is reported where an old man actually sung a psalm in front of some hives. In New England the hives were sometimes draped in black. The semi-sacred character with which antiquity invested this wonderful little insect sufficiently accounts for the practice. Mr. Whittier has some verses about it in “Home Ballads.” Beating upon a pot or kettle when bees are swarming comes from Virgil’s injunction, in the like case, to raise tinkling sounds.