Superst. I

184. If a mouse has gnawed at your dress, it means mischief.
185. If the women or maids are washing sacks, it will soon rain.
186. To sneeze while putting on your shoes on, is a sign of bad-luck.
187. To put a clean shirt on of a Friday is good for the gripes.
188. Eating stolen cheese or bread gives you the hiccough.
189. If you dig devil's bit the midnight before St John's, the roots are still unbitten, and good for driving the devil away.
190. John's wort drives witches away and the devil; that's why he out of spite pricks holes in all the leaves with his needle.
191. When a person dies, set the windows open, and the soul can get out.
192. For a child to grow up good, its godmother or the woman that carries it home from church must immediately lay it under the table, and the father take it up and give it to the mother.
193. A year without skating is bad for the barley.
194. If they are building a weir across the river, it will not rain in that country till they have done.
195. Put a goose through your legs three times, give her three mouthfuls of chewed bread with the words 'Go in God's name,' and she'll always come home.
196. He that has fits of cold fever shall crawl to a running stream, strew a handful of salt down stream, and say: 'In God his name I sow for seed this grain, When the seed comes up may I see my cold friend again.'
197. The first time you hear the cuckoo in spring, ask him: 'Cuckoo, baker's-man, true answer give, How many years have I to live?' And as many times as he sings, so many years more will you live.
198. If an unmarried maiden eat the brown that sticks inside the porridge pot, it will rain at her wedding; and if it rains, the new couple get rich (see 498).
199. To sell your cattle well at market, smoke them with the black ball dug out of the middle of an ant-hill.
200. Never hand things over a cradle with the child in it; nor leave it open.
201. A thief's thumb on your person, or among your wares, makes them go fast.
202. If you throw a bunch of inherited keys at a door when some one is listening outside, the eavesdropper is deaf for the rest of his life.
203. Eat milk on Shrove Tuesday, and you'll not be sunburnt in the summer.
204. If a bride wishes to rule her husband, let her on the wedding day dress in a baking trough, and knock at the church door.
205. To wean a child, let the mother set it down on the floor, and knock it over with her foot; it will forget her the sooner.
206. If a dog runs between a woman's legs, her husband is going to beat her.
207. Put money in the mouth of the dead, and they will not come back if they have hidden a treasure.
208. Toothpicks made of wood that lightning has struck, send the toothache away.
209. A knife shall not lie on its back, for fear of its hurting the angels.
210. If two clocks in the town happen to strike together, a married couple will die.
211. A boil will safely heal if squeezed with a three-crossed knife.
212. Let the bride arrive at the bridegroom's house in the dark, then they'll have every corner full.
213. If a dog runs through between two friends, they will break off their friendship.
214. He that would dig up a treasure, must not speak a word.
215. To draw storks to your house, make them a nest on the chimney with your left hand.
216. If you have a swollen neck, go in silence to the mill, steal the tie from one of the sacks, and tie it about your neck.
217. When you see the first swallow in spring, halt immediately, and dig the ground under your left foot with a knife; you will find there a coal that is good for a year against the ague (see G, 98).
218. In digging for treasure, have bread about you, and the spectres can't disturb you.
219. Godfather's money (gift) makes rich and lucky.
220. When you have been robbed, drive an accidentally found horseshoe nail (see 129) into the place where the fire always is, and you'll have your own again.
221. Bastard children are luckier than lawful ones.
222. At a christening get a mite of bread consecrated, and the child's parents will never want for bread.
223. He that counts his money at new moon is never short of it.
224. Drop a cross-penny on a treasure, and it can't move away.
225. Eat lentils at Shrovetide, and money will pour (quellen, swell?).
226. He of whom a boy (or girl) makes his (or her) first purchase at market, will have good luck in selling that day.
227. Let a merchant throw the first money he takes on the ground, and plant his feet upon it; his business will go the better.
228. For the cuckoo to sing after St John's is not good, it betokens dearth.
229. When the bride is fetched home, she shall make no circuit, but go the common road; otherwise she has ill luck.
230. If a man passing under a henroost is bedropped by the hen, it bodes misfortune, if by the cock, good luck (see 105).
231. A new garment should not be put on empty, something should be dropt into the pocket first for luck.
232. In choosing sponsors, ask an unmarried woman, else the child will be unlucky in marriage, and also have no children.
233. He that is lucky when young will beg his bread when old; and vice versa.
234. He that carries wormwood about him cannot be becried (bewitched).
235. If you find a needle, and the point is towards you, you'll be unlucky; if the head, lucky.
236. Put nothing in your mouth of a morning, till you've had a bite of breath.
237. If the first frog you see in spring leaps in water and not on land, you may expect misfortune all that year.
238. Move into a new dwelling with a waxing moon or at full moon; and carry bread and salt into it, then everybody in it will be full and want for nothing.
239. If you hear horses neigh, listen attentively, they announce good luck.
240. If a woman in the six weeks spin wool, hemp or flax, the child will be hanged some day.
241. Women shall not brush or plait themselves on a Friday, it breeds vermin.
242. If you find money before breakfast, and there is no wood under it, it is unlucky.
243. He that was born on a Sunday is luckier than other men.
244. If after sunrise on Shrove Tuesday you thrash in silence, you drive the moles away.
245. Stand with your face to the waning moon, and say: 'Like the moon from day to day, Let my sorrows wear away' (see 492).
246. Don't leave the oven-fork in the oven; if you do, the witches can take a dollar a day from the house.
247. Nothing out of the way shall be built, planted or planned in a Leap year: it does not prosper.
248. If in going out your clothes get caught in the door or on the latch, stay a while where you are, or you'll meet with mishap.
249. Pare your nails on a Friday, and you have luck (see 340).
250. If you lay a broom in a witch's way, so that she must step over it, she turns faint, and can plot no mischief.
251. He that has about him an owl's heart, or the stone out of a bat's back, or a hoopoo's head, will have luck in play (see 329).
252. When the candle at night burns roses (forms a death's head), there's money or some luck coming next day.
253. Of the first corn brought in at harvest, take a few of the first sheaves, and lay them cross-wise in the four corners of the barn; then the dragon can't get any of it.
254. If it freezes on the shortest day, corn falls in price; if it is mild, it rises.
255. As many grains as the theuerlings (dear-lings, a kind of mushroom) have in them, so many groschen will corn be worth from that time.
256. If you search in vain for something that must be there, the devil is holding his hand or tail over it.
257. On your way to market, see that no one meets you carrying water; else you'd better turn back, you'll have no luck buying or selling.
258. By the grain of the first sheaf you thrash, you may guess the rise or fall in the price of corn, thus: fill and empty a measure four times, making four heaps; then put the heaps back into the measure, and level off. If grains fall from any heap, or if they seem short, then in the corresponding quarter of the coming year corn will fall or rise.
259. Lay by some bread from your wedding, and you'll never want it.
260. He that keeps and carries about him the bit of coat he brought into the world (the glücks-haube), will prosper in everything.
261. He that has about him a bitten-off mole's paw, will buy cheap and sell dear.
262. Deduct nothing from the cost of making a child's first dress; the more you take off, the less luck he'll have.
263. If the seed you are going to sow be laid on the table, it will not come up.
264. The first baking after Newyear's day, make as many little cakes as there are people in the house, give each a name, and prick a hole in it with your finger: if any one's hole gets baked up, he will die.
265. When a child is going to church to be christened, lift him out through the window: he'll be the stronger, and live the longer.
266. If you are telling something, and you or anybody sneeze, the tale is true.
267. If two people rock one child, it is robbed of its rest.
268. Never burn straw that any one has slept on, else he cannot rest.
269. If you are taken ill at church, you do not easily recover.
270. He that touches tinder with his fingers, cannot make it catch.
271. If you scrape cheese on the tablecloth, people will dislike you.
272. He that eats much mouldy bread, lives to be old.
273. If the man sharpen his knife otherwise than on the whetstone, there will be strife in the house.
274. Who eats no beans on Christmas eve, becomes an ass.
275. Who eats not of nine herbs on Maundy Thursday, gets the fever.
276. He that sews or patches anything on his own body, shall always take something in his mouth, or he becomes forgetful.
277. If a child in its first year smell at anything, it learns not to smell afterwards.
278. Your blessed bread (liebe brot) shall not be left lying on its back.
279. To eat up clean what's on the table makes fine weather the next day.
280. Let him that has the hiccough, put a bare knife in a can of beer, and take a long draught in one breath.
281. If a sick or dying man has hen's feathers under him, he cannot die.
282. To appease the storm-wind, shake a meal-sack clean, and say: 'There, wind, take that, To make pap for your brat!'
283. If after washing you wipe your hands on the tablecloth, you'll get warts.
284. When the bells ring thick, there is generally some one just going to die; if the church-bell rings clear, it means a wedding.
285. When a bride is on her way to church, if it rains, she has been crying; if the sun shines, laughing.
286. If some one happens to come where a woman is churning, and counts the hoops on the churn first up and then down, the butter will not come.
287. It is not good to look over your fingers or the flat of your hand.
288. If you give a baby part of a red baked apple to eat the first time instead of pap, it will have red cheeks.