Superst. I

931. A shirt of safety, proof against lead or steel, must be spun, woven and sewn by a pure chaste maiden on Christmas day; from the neck down, it covers half the man; on the breast part two heads are sewn on, that on the right with a long beard, that on the left a devil's face wearing a crown (see 115).
932. The key test: a hymn book is tied up, inclosing a key, all but the ring, which, resting on two fingers, can turn either way; questions are then asked.
933. A woman with child may not pass under any hanging line, else her child will not escape the rope. They avoid even the string on which a birdcage hangs (688. 925).
934. In setting peas, take a few in your mouth before sunset, keep them in silently while planting, and those you set will be safe from sparrows.
935. The sexton does not dig the grave till the day of the burial, else you'd have no peace from the dead.
936. Children dying unbaptized hover betwixt earth and heaven.
937. Children must not stretch the forefinger toward heaven; they kill a dear little angel every time (see 334. 947).
938. (6) Many would sooner be knocked on the head than pass between two females.
939. One man puts his white shirt on of a Monday; he'd rather go naked than wear clean linen on Sunday.
940. I know some that think, if they did not eat yellow jam on Ash Wednesday, nine sorts of green herbs on Maundy Thursday, plaice and garlic on Whitwednesday, they would turn donkeys before Martinmas (see 275).
941. Bride and bridegroom shall stand so close together that nobody can see through.
942. They shall observe the tap of their first beer or wine cask, and step into bed together.
943. The bridegroom shall be married in a bathing apron.
944. He that wipes his mouth on the tablecloth hath never his fill.
945. 'Tis not good to have thy garment mended on thy body (see 42).
946. The last loaf shoved into the oven they mark, and call it mine host: 'So long as mine host be in house, we want not for bread; if he be cut before his time, there cometh a dearth.'
947. 'On thy life, point not with they finger, thou wilt stab an angel!'
948. 'Dear child, lay not the knife so, the dear angels will tread it into their feet!' If one see a child lie in the fire, and a knife on its back at one time, one shall sooner run to the knife than to the child (see 209. 596-7).
949. Cup or can to overspan is no good manners; who drinks thereof shall have the heart cramp (see 11).
950. (7) It shall profit the sick to smoke them with a rod that is broke out of an old hedge and hath nine ends or twigs.
951. Or with hay that is fetched unspoken, unchidden, from the loft of an inherited barn.
952. On the Absolution nights (before Advent, before Christmas, before Twelfthday, and Saturday in Candlemas) the Gastein girls, as soon as it is dark, go to the sheep fold, and clutch blindly among the flock; if at the first clutch they have caught a ram, they are confident they'll be married that year. (8)
953. (9) Some, in the middle of the night before Christmas, take a vessel full of water, and ladle it out with a certain small measure into another vessel. This they do several times over, and if then they find more water than the first time, they reckon upon an increase of their goods the following year. If the quantity remain the same, they believe their fortune will stand still, and if there be less water, that it will diminish (see 258).
954. Some tie the end of a ball of thread to an inherited key, and unroll the ball till it hangs loose, maybe an ell, maybe six; then they put it out of window, and swing it back and forwards along the wall, saying 'hark, hark!' From the quarter where they shall go a wooing and to live, they will hear a voice (see 110).
955. Some, the day before Christmas, cut wood off nine sorts of trees, make a fire of it in their room at midnight, strip themselves naked, and throw their shifts outside the door. Sitting down by the fire, they say: 'Here I sit naked and cold as the drift, if my sweetheart would come and just throw me my shift!' A figure will then come and throw the shift in, and they can tell by the face who their lover will be.
956. Others take four onions, put one in each corner of the room, and name them after bachelors; they let them lie from Christmas to Twelfth day, and the man whose onion then buds will present himself as a suitor; if none have budded the wedding won't come off.
957. Some, the day before Christmas, buy the fag end of a wheat loaf for a penny, cut a piece of crust off, tie it under their right arm, wear it like that all day, and in going to bed lay it under their head, saying: 'I've got into bed, And have plenty of bread; Let my lover but come, And he shall have some.' If the bread looks gnawed in the morning, the match will come off that year; if it's whole, there's no hope.
958. At midnight before Christmas day, the men or maids go to the stack of firewood, pull one log out, and look if it be straight or crooked; their sweetheart's figure shall be according (see 109).
959. Some, on Christmas eve, buy three farthings worth of white bread, divide it in three parts, and consume it along three streets, one in every street; in the third street they shall see their sweetheart.
960. The night before Christmas, you take two empty nutshells, with tiny wax tapers in them, to stand for you and your sweetheart, and set them afloat on a dishful of water. If they come together, your suit will prosper; if they go apart it will come to nought. (Ungewiss. Apotheker p. 649.)
961. If a master is left in the lurch by his man, or a girl in the family way by her lover, you put a certain penny in the pan of a mill, and set the mill going. As it turns faster, such anguish comes upon the fugitive, that he cannot stay, but neck and crop he comes home. This they call 'making it hot for a man.' (Beschr. des Fichtelbergs, Lpzg. 1716. 4, p. 154.)
962. To discover what the year shall bring, they plant themselves on a cross roads or parting of ways at 12 the night before Christmas, stand stockstill without speaking for an hour, whilst all the future opens on their eyes and ears. This they call 'to go hearken.' (Ibid. p. 155).
963. On Andrew's day fill thee a glass with water: if the year shall be moist, it runneth over; if dry, it standeth heaped atop. (Aller Practic Grossm.)
964. On Andrew's eve the maids mark whence the dogs bark; from that quarter comes the future husband.
965. They tie a farthing to their great toe, sit down on the way to church, and look among the Matin-goers for their bridegroom. (Tharsander 1, 84.)
966. To know if an infant be bewitched, put under its cradle a vessel full of running water, and drop an egg in; if it float, the child is bewitched. (Val. Kräutermann's Zauber-arzt 216.)
967. Evil persons in Silesia did upon a time have a knife forged, and therewith cut but a little twig off every tree, and in a short time all the forest perished. (Carlowitz's Sylvicultur p. 46).
968. The oak is a prophetic tree: in gallnuts a fly betokens war, a worm dearth, a spider pestilence (conf. 1046).
969. Wood felled in the dog days will not burn.
970. A piece of oak passed lightly over the body in silence, before sunrise on John's day, heals all open sores.
971. The elsbeer-tree is also called dragon tree: branches of it hung over house and stable on Walburgis day keep out the flying dragon.
972. Oak and walnut will not agree: they cannot stand together without (one?) perishing. So with blackthorn and whitethorn: if placed together, the white one always gets the upper hand, the black dies out.
973. Cut no timber in the bad wädel (waxing moon): timber (schlagholz = strike wood) felled at new-moon is apt to strike out again; that felled in a waning moon burns better.
974. When a sucking babe dies, they put a bottle of its mother's milk in the coffin with it; then her milk dries up without making her ill.
975. If you have warts, nail a big brown snail to the doorpost with a wooden hammer; as it dries up, the wart will fade away.
976. If an old woman meet you at early morn, and greet you, you must answer 'As much to you!'
977. Some people can stop a waggon of hay on its way, so that it will not stir from the spot: knock at every wheel nail, and it will be free again.
978. In a thief's footprints put burning tinder: it will burn him and betray him.
979. If a swallow fly into the stable, and pass under the cow, she will give blood for milk: lead her to a cross way, milk her 3 times through a branch, and empty what you have milked backwards over her head three times.
980. A bunch of wild thyme or marjoram laid beside the milk keeps it from being bewitched.
981. If you walk once round your garden fence on Shrove Sunday, not a plank will be stolen out of it for a year to come.
982. If you have many snails on your land, go before sunrise and take one snail from the east side; then by way of north to the west, and pick up another; then to the north; then by way of east to the south: if you put the four snails in a bag, and hang them inside your chimney, all the snails on your land will creep into the chimney and die.
983. If, in cutting the vegetables in autumn, a molehill be found under the cabbage, the master will die.
984. In Westphalia, when a loaf is cut, they call the upper crust laughing knost, the under the crying knost. When maid or man goes out of service, they get a jammer knost (wailing crust), which they keep for years after.
985. When children have the schluckuk (hiccough?), their heart is growing.
986. The first stork a peasant sees in the year, he falls on the ground, rolls round, and is then free from pains in the back for a year.
987. On buying a cow from another village, you give beside the price a milk penny, so that her milk may not be kept back. At the boundary you turn her three times round, and let her look at her old home, to banish her regret.
988. Many fasten fern in blossom over the house door: then all goes well as far as the waggon whip reaches.
989. On the first day of Lent, boys and girls run about the fields like mad, with blazing wisps of straw, to drive out the evil sower (Rhöne).
990. The first night of Christmas the people of the Rhön roll on unthrashed pea straw. The peas that drop out are mixed with the rest, which improves the crop.
991. On Innocent's day, every adult is flogged with a rod, and must ransom himself with a gift. The trees too are beaten, to promote their fertility.
992. Whoso doth any sewing to bed or clothing on a Sunday, cannot die therein till it be unripped.
993. If you rise from the spinning wheel without twisting off the strap, the earth mannikin comes and spins at it: you don't see him, but hear the spindle hum.
994. A beggar that would pay his debt in full ought to say as many paternosters as it would take blades of grass to cover the bread given him. As he cannot, he says 'God yield ye!'
995. Never slam the door: a spirit sits between, and it hurts him (892).
996. The first child christened at a newly consecrated font receives the gift of seeing spirits and things to come, until some one out of curiosity step on his left foot and look over his right shoulder; then the gift passes over to him. But that can be prevented by the sponsors dropping a straw, a pin or a piece of paper into the basin.
997. He that is always praying, and prides himself on it, prays himself through heaven, and has to mind the geese the other side.
998. If you drop bread and butter, and it falls on the buttered side, you have committed a sin that day.
999. When girls are weeding, they look for the little herb 'leif in de meute' (love meet me), and hide it about them: the first bachelor that then comes towards them is there sweetheart.
1000. Whoever builds a house must use bought, stolen and given timber to it, or he has no luck: a belief so general in Lippe, that even a large farmer who has wood of his own, will steal a beam, then go and accuse himself, and pay for it.
1001. When the holy weather (lightning) strikes, it can only be quenched with milk, not with water (conf. 1122).
1002. In weeding flax, the girls pull up the weed Red Henry (mercury?): whichever way the root grew, from there will come the sweetheart; if it grew straight down, the girl will die soon (conf. Dan. Sup. 126).
1003. Whoever is the first to see the stork come in, and to bid it welcome, not a tooth of his will ache that year.
1004. If you go to bed without clearing the table, the youngest in the house will get no sleep.

Notes:
6. 938-949 from Chr. Weise's "Three Arrant Fools," Lpzg 1704, pp. 253+7. [Back]
7. 950-1 ibid., p. 360. [Back]
8. Muchar's Gastein p. 146. [Back]
9. 953-9 from Praetorii Saturnalia, Lips. 1663. [Back]