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Child Item

Old superstitions you've heard of/still use

Munstergirl854

Ones I've heard down through the years...
Never sign your name in red.Bad luck.
If giving a knife to someone include a penny as otherwise this will cut the friendship.
Being able to draw a perfect circle on paper is a sign of madness.
The colour lilac is bad luck to be found in a home(used to be put in coffins to mask the smell).
Peacock feathers-very bad luck in a home..

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whisky_galore

Going into a large building, taking part in a set of rituals that helps you get into heaven in an afterlife.

Taeholic

monkeysnapper wrote: »

Holly Jesus feck ....I work in a warehouse and always signing dockets with a red pen !!!!!

I'm in real trouble now

Lol you might want to get some holy water

Taeholic

tupenny wrote: »

My gran went mad at me for putting new runners on the table. Ahh the 90s!
Bad luck apparently

Same with mine, she would go absolutely mental. Not sure what the reasoning behind it was mind you.

Purple Mountain

People around my (rural) way still bless their home and land on the 30th of April each year as it's "May eve".
Supposedly it wards off puiseogs for the rest of the year.

Badly Drunk Boy

tupenny wrote: »

My gran went mad at me for putting new runners on the table. Ahh the 90s!
Bad luck apparently

Some people around here won't even allow shoes on their floors!!!

:pac:

[Deleted User]

McGinniesta wrote: »

Superstition is the ultimate in feeble mindedness.

It beats religion and anything else you can think of.

Oh I am not sure. There seems to be no reason at all to think there is a god.

But with _some_ superstitions at least they appear to have just been formed out of common sense.

For example the "bad luck to walk under ladders" is at least based on the notion that its pretty dumb to walk under ladders at the best of time. They can fall on you - or the people up them who are unsteady anyway can drop things like paint or paint cans on you.

There is also self fulfilling superstition. For example Friday 13th if I recall correctly genuinely does have more accidents and so forth statistically. Probably because people start acting weird and out of the norm on that day in deference to the superstition - and hence actually do cause bad things to happen.

So I think I would say a lot of superstition is higher on the rung - or at least on the same level - as much of religion. I can not really say one "beats" the other.

[Deleted User]

Endaaaagh wrote: »

Before I built my house, I planted 4 posts where the 4 corners of the house would be. This was an old way of checking to ensure you weren't blocking a fairy path with your house. If the posts remained upright, and weren't knocked then it was OK to build

That's a great one! Never heard of it before.. like applying to get planning permission from the spiritual realm. I wonder if they have civil servant spirits that process the thing and listen to objections from poltergeists et al.

Mickeroo

You should always leave a house through the same door you came in. Not one that was practiced in our house but one of our neighbours physically blocked my brother from leaving through the front door after he had came into the house through the back door.

Endaaaagh

Mickeroo wrote: »

You should always leave a house through the same door you came in. Not one that was practiced in our house but one of our neighbours physically blocked my brother from leaving through the front door after he had came into the house through the back door.

My mother still does this. Even if she came through the front door, through the hall, into the sitting room then onto the kitchen. She'll follow the same path back out, even if it's quicker if she went directly from the kitchen to the front door

Strumms

fryup wrote: »

what's the one that if you're selling a house to bury a statuette of st jude or someone similar in the back garden ??

I’m reading that it’s St Joseph for the house sale..

My grandmother always had a I think ‘devotion’ is the word to St Jude... she had a big statue of the fella in a glass case in the front room... the patron saint of lost causes..

Supposedly when my Uncle her son was very young about 12 he was involved in an accident where he was hit by a car while out cycling ..he was touch and go .. she said a rake of prayers and he made a total recovery...

She’d always say to anybody, if it was an exam you didn’t think you’d pass, a job interview you were nervous about, somebody sick in the family/circle of friends...that was the lad to pray to... even called her house after the saint, a small plaque with St. Jude...bedside the door... her daughters carry on the tradition...

I’m a bit skeptical but each to their own.

BrianBoru00

The child of prague in the garden to day before a wedding to ensure good weather...

cml387

The one about the sword seems to come from Churchill giving a gift of a sword to Stalin at the Tehran conference in 1943. I read that it had to be presented with a coin to avoid "cutting" the friendship between the two (ahem).

Water John

BrianBoru00 wrote: »

The child of prague in the garden to day before a wedding to ensure good weather...

Have a niece getting married in a few days, will check with her.
The women in my house use use a prayer to St. Anthony and a promise of money to find something lost. A strange mix of religion and paganism.

honeyjo

The 1st day of a new year in a new house, the 1st person to cross the threshold must be a dark haired person carrying a piece of coal.

A Saturday Flit is a short sit- Never move house or leave hospital on a Saturday

If salt is spilled throw a pinch over your left shoulder

rainbowtrout

tupenny wrote: »

My gran went mad at me for putting new runners on the table. Ahh the 90s!
Bad luck apparently

My mother used to do the same, so much so that the reaction is deeply ingrained at this stage.
Could walk in the door as a teenager with bag from Penneys and before I had got near the kitchen table I'd get 'No shoes on the table'. Most of the time I didn't have shoes in the bag.

If I buy new shoes the bag goes on the chair or the floor not the table automatically.

cml387

Redhaired women and fishermen.

Mind you such were the dangers associated with fishing back then you can't blame them for being superstitious

rainbowtrout

Purple Mountain wrote: »

People around my (rural) way still bless their home and land on the 30th of April each year as it's "May eve".
Supposedly it wards off puiseogs for the rest of the year.

Limerick?

We always had bonfire night in Limerick on May Eve. Still do. It was news to me when I moved to the north west years ago that this wasn't a thing, and that they had Bonfire Night in June.

Sgt Hartman

theguzman wrote: »

Never disturb a Lios, fairy fort, rath etc. I still continue the superstition out of respect for the old beliefs and from a historical and archaeological point of view I would like these ancient monuments to continue undisturbed into the future. Instead nowadays you have some thick farmer with a head on him like a kosangas cylinder and the IQ of a midge will come along and bulldoze it out because it is ruining his field of silage or whatever after that thing lasting for for thousands of years previously, protected by ancient pisheogs, curses and warnings of bad luck to let it alone. The old people had respect for the dead and ancients, they had absolutely nothing but never touched these places, today some moron with a 211 Toyota Lancruiser worth €90k will bulldoze these out of sheer greed for a few sq metres of topsoil.

I couldn't have put it better myself. It's nothing more than pig ignorance and greed. Btw I was laughing at your "head on him like a kosangas cylinder" comment

Purple Mountain

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Limerick?

We always had bonfire night in Limerick on May Eve. Still do. It was news to me when I moved to the north west years ago that this wasn't a thing, and that they had Bonfire Night in June.

Yup

silliussoddius

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Limerick?

We always had bonfire night in Limerick on May Eve. Still do. It was news to me when I moved to the north west years ago that this wasn't a thing, and that they had Bonfire Night in June.

There are two nights for bonfire night, toward the end of June and the other wrong one.

silliussoddius

cml387 wrote: »

Redhaired women and fishermen.

Mind you such were the dangers associated with fishing back then you can't blame them for being superstitious

Also whistling on board (supposedly tempting the wind), pointing at things, mentioning cows or foxes. And no, I have no idea why.

rainbowtrout

silliussoddius wrote: »

There are two nights for bonfire night, toward the end of June and the other wrong one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltane

I will walk cattle around a bonfire on the 30th April and see if you can stop me. :P

[Deleted User]

zanador wrote: »

Never buying a wallet for yourself, and putting a penny in one you buy for someone else. I don't believe it but I like it

I bought my mother a purse in 2000 while in Paris. She still has it and the 2 franc coin I put in it is still in the same pouch.

Archeron

To this day I still keep a dead magpie wrapped in cling film in my pocket. If I'm out and about and I see just one, I avoid any bad luck by pulling out Flappy.

One becomes two magpies and tons of sweet good luck.

Cee-Jay-Cee

theguzman wrote: »

Never disturb a Lios, fairy fort, rath etc. I still continue the superstition out of respect for the old beliefs and from a historical and archaeological point of view I would like these ancient monuments to continue undisturbed into the future. Instead nowadays you have some thick farmer with a head on him like a kosangas cylinder and the IQ of a midge will come along and bulldoze it out because it is ruining his field of silage or whatever after that thing lasting for for thousands of years previously, protected by ancient pisheogs, curses and warnings of bad luck to let it alone. The old people had respect for the dead and ancients, they had absolutely nothing but never touched these places, today some moron with a 211 Toyota Lancruiser worth €90k will bulldoze these out of sheer greed for a few sq metres of topsoil.

You’ll find that traditional country farmers will be the last to remove fairy forts/trees etc and it’s usually developers etc who remove them without a care. I live in the country and cycle around all the back country roads and there are countless stone rings, random fairy trees in the middle of fields which farmers leave and work around rather than remove.

Doctors room ghost

MeepMeep2021 wrote: »

That's a great one! Never heard of it before.. like applying to get planning permission from the spiritual realm. I wonder if they have civil servant spirits that process the thing and listen to objections from poltergeists et al.

Eddie lenihan has a book called meeting the other crowd.it’s all about that.you should get it

biddyearley

A woman, a dog , a walnut tree, the more you beat the better they be.

Origins in an old Aesop fable, and bastardized over time.

Whatever may have been people's opinion of how well a woman, ass or dog respond to punishment, the belief that this was beneficial in the case of walnut trees persisted. One encyclopaedia of superstitions reports that in country districts 'it was a common persuasion that whipping a walnut tree tended to increase the produce and improve the quality of the fruit’ and that this took place in early spring.[12] Another explanation is that 'the old custom of beating a walnut-tree was carried out firstly to fetch down the fruit and secondly to break the long shoots and so encourage the production of short fruiting spurs.’[13]WIKI

[Deleted User]

Russians only give an even number of flowers for a sad occasion like illness or death, and an odd number for happy stuff like anniversaries and impressing ladies. If you accidentally give an even number of flowers in a bouquet, you're basically wishing bad luck on the recipient. Makes perfect sense, of course. There's nothing worse than a cursed bouquet.

My gran can't leave a penny or cent on the ground. "See a penny, pick it up, and all the day you'll have good luck. Pass it on to a friend and your luck will never end". Bullsh, of course. They only thing you'll have all day is extraordinarily germy hands from picking filthy money up from the filthy ground.

BuboBubo

My mother always said shoes on the table means there's going to be a row.

I used to walk under ladders in my teens just to torment her

[Deleted User]

Ones from the current era, still referenced at home:

A hen laying an egg in the hedge (i.e. ditch) is bad luck. Prepare for the worst.

Don't let farmyard ducks swim in the river. They get a taste for travel, perhaps.

Stepping on cowshit: half-a-boot is good luck. A full boot? Call the doctor, you're done-for. Goodbye.

Luck Money. Everyone from a farm has probably heard of this, probably unknown in cities. If you sell an animal, especially a horse but anything really, you hand back 5% "for luck". Some say 10%, ignore that. 5% is sensible, 10% is superstition.

Another horse one. Burying a dead horse is bad luck. Burying all livestock is illegal, but when I was growing up (this was only the 1990s), you could illegaly bury cattle, but never a horse.

I like these superstitions. Some of them really have logic behind them. Don't be letting your ducks go down the river.