An interview with folklorist Steve Roud on superstitions and the role they played in our ancestors lives.
Is it good or bad luck to encounter a black cat? Since when have people believed Friday 13th is unlucky? How are eggshells connected to witchcraft? In which part of the British Isles is it considered lucky to find a pin?
Steve Roud, folklore and historian for over thirty years, tries to answer these and plenty of other superstitious musings in his latest book, The Penguin Guide To Superstitions of Britain and Ireland. Set out in a dictionary format, the book provides an easy reference guide to the daily beliefs and rituals of our ancestors. It is a compelling compendium of social and regional history that will add depth to anyone's knowledge of the past.
Although fifty-seven-year-old Steve only started writing about the topic over the last few years, he has had an interest in folklore for as long as he can remember.
"I've always been interested in folklore it seems. As a child I was always interested by fairy tales, songs and dances, but it was a book written by the Opie's called The Lore & Language Of School Children which was about the origin of playground rhymes and games. That was published in 1959 when I was quite young. I was only ten then, but I remember reading that and thinking wow, this is interesting. I've been hooked ever since."
As a career, Steve finds that the most interesting aspect of researching superstitions and folklore is that they quite literally, crop up in across the range of sources.
"If it says that someone crossed their fingers in a novel that was first published in 1932 it proves that this was a superstition in circulation around that date. Of course it is likely to be much older than that, but until you can prove it with a source then that would be the earliest date you could say it was in use. So to do this sort of research you need to read everything you can like drama such as Shakespeare, today's newspaper to even overhearing a conversation on the bus, and that is what makes it so fascinating; it really crosses a broad spectrum of sources."
After reading and researching hundreds of superstitions Steve believes that superstitious cures are the most bizarre.
"If someone was suffering from bed wetting, youu would feed tthem frried mice. Hopeefully they took the skin and bones out first but that was quite common."
"If you had a swelling on the neck, which was called a wen, you would cure it by stroking it with a dead persons hand. This wasn't a weird thing, this is what everybody believed. Up until Victorian times, this was a standard belief of most ordinary people. When there was a public hanging the hangman used to make a lot of money from people queing up to be stroked by the dead hand. All these things although they sound weird to us now were actually quite widespread."
As strange as they sound, it is corroborated in historical evidence that our ancestors would have taken superstitions seriously and used them guide their lives.
"Certainly somebody going to market, and there are historical examples of this, would turn around if they saw a magpie. Our ancestors definitely took it a lot more seriously than we do. We just we play at it; we like to think that we are, but very few of us are really truly superstitious, and those that are probably suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which is a genuine psychiatric problem. If we really believed in superstition we would never function, we'd never leave the house on Friday 13th or get to work if a black cat crossed our path. It would be ridiculous if you tried to live by them."
Steve believes the reason we are less superstitious is also because we do not live such dangerous times as our ancestors.
"What's changed is life around us has changed. Superstitions arrive when people feel out of control or worried about something they can not control. In the past, life was more dangerous. You could catch a disease and be dead in a week, half of all babies died before they were five, and there were awful diseases like typhoid and dysteria. So there was a lot more uncertainty about what could happen to you and therefore a lot more superstition, but nowadays, we are very scientific. We know about germs, drugs, cures, technology has moved on, and the proof is in the superstitions. There's lots of superstitions about candles, but none about light bulbs; there's lots about open fires but none about radiators."
"Many superstitions have faded away because our life is more safe and secure and we understand more about it. Of course, some people say we don't understand everything, but in general our life is much less uncertain than it used to be."
The other way superstitions have changed in response to our modern world, is that they are less regional than they were in the past.
"Nowadays we have very similar superstitions. There's a top ten that everyone knows - like ladders, mirrors - if you stop somebody in the street they will all say the same general ones."
"In the past, in Victorian times, things were much more local or regional for everything. You didn't travel too far, there was no television, no radio, no mass media so the people you talked to were likely to be from our own area. Some travelled but most people stuck to their locality. So differences could grow then and prosper because life was local. Superstition is definitely an unofficial hope that you learn from your parents and other children at school. In 1850 if you went to school in Hampshire, everyone would be from Hampshire. Local difference arise simply because people weren't communicating."
As a result of our modern technology andd safe world, and our age of mass communication, new superstitions crop up less often.
"Nowadays, I think today we have a very limited repertoire of superstitions. In the past there were hundreds or thousands, and they are certainly not all in my book, I couldn't claim that! Some that were quite local, or some that were just in one family. A family could have it's own superstitions. Some of them can be personal, you can make up your own - you know, I must get back into bed before the toilet stops flushing. That sort of thing happens all the time, and other people's superstitions sound really barmy but the ones you have grown up with you are comfortable with. You don't realise they are weird until someone else points it out to you!"
That said, there is one recent addition to the superstition repertoire, which was started by the generation of the 70s.
"I am 57, but I had never heard of that superstition, until I started writing the book. People who are around thirty years old seem to know it so it is probably one that did arise about 30 years ago. I was walking to work not long ago behind a person who was about that age and I noticed he was avoiding 3 drains - he was weaving in and out of them, so people still do it, but most of us really only play at being superstitious. We don't take them seriously. If you went for a job and somebody said, sorry we aren't going to employ you, you have red hair you would take them to a tribunal. One hundred years ago it would have happened because red hair was unpopular and considered unlucky."
Another more recent superstitions that may surprise some readers is that of the bride throwing the bouquet on her wedding day.
"As far as we know, the tradition of bouquet throwing began in the 1950s. There is always the possibility that it wasn't recorded or we've missed the evidence, but in that sort of case, because it is still in living memory you can ask people, and I haven't found anybody who threw the bouquet before the war. And often, I will speak to elderly people, ask them when they got married and ask about the bouquet. They always say that no they didn't do that in those days. So I would have thought that one came from America, as a lot of things do nowadays."
"The whole Halloween thing is another one from America. There used to be a similar celebration called Mischief Night, from Leeds, and that is definitely indigenous to this country, but that's more to do with Guy Fawkes night. But when I was young in the 1950s, we had nothing to do with Halloween whatsoever. We didn't even know it existed, where as Guy Fawkes night was the night for playing tricks and throwing bangers. It's only in the last couple of years that its swapped around and Halloween has become the important night for a lot of people whilst Guy Fawkes has almost faded away."
Touching wood is another superstition people presume is ancient, but again it's a disappointing no, according to Steve.
"We don't think so. Again you have to go by the evidence, but the earliest reference we have is 1810, and it was a children's game called Tiggy Tiggy Touch Wood. It was a chasing game and you were safe when you are touching wood. The rest of the time you could be caught. That was an extremely popular phrase - everybody knew the Tiggy Tiggy Touch Wood just like we all know the phrase eeny-meeny-miny-mo - it's just part of our language. We have no evidence that it goes back any further. It is definitely nothing to do wiith tree spirits as people say. There's always an explanatin for a superstition that is completely wrong, but which everyone likes to believe."
People believe Ring-A-Ring-A-Roses goes back to the plague, but it doesn't. Again it is a children's rhyme that came from America in the 1880s, the earliest reference we have for it. Somebody made that one up somewhere in the 1960s or 70s and now everybody knows it. We like to have a romantic impression that these things go back hundreds of years, but most of them don't."
However, for all those romantic folklorists out there, there is one superstition that is thousands of years old.
"The one that does go back thousand of years is 'Bless You' when you sneeze. The Romans said it, the Greeks said it or something along the lines of God be with you, or God's health, some sort of blessing and that one certainly seems to be universal. They say it all over the continent so we are pretty sure that that is one of the oldest superstitions."
"Superstitions don't last thousand of years though - they come and go like fashions or slang. They suddenly pop up and then they are around for some time, perhaps a hundred or two hundred years, and then they fade out. It is a fact though that superstitions go back thousand of years. The idea that you give something and it is lucky, or you do something else and its isn't is a theme or basis that has lasted that long, but specific superstitions themselves tend to come and go, like singing songs."
"Singing goes back to cave men, but the song white Christmas doesn't. Superstition goes back thousand of years but the specific superstition doesn't, but it is very unromantic and people don't like me to say that."
Steve unsurprisingly, does not believe in superstitions, although he does think human nature cannot fail to comply to them in some respects.
"Writing this book has taught me that superstitions are bonkers. They really makes no sense at all, so I am now I think as un-superstitious as you can be, but it is very hard. Superstitious thinking is ingrained in us, I think. You know the idea that you don't tempt fate so that, I don't say to you, I've never been run over because if I do, it will happen that afternoon. So that sort of thing, I have to constantly guard against because they are all swimming around my mind! You can't help it, and when it comes to my grandchildren, I would perhaps touch wood, because I could risk it with myself perhaps, but not with them because they are really important to me, so I might just do it just in case. So even though I say I am not superstitious, its a constant battle not to be!"
"I think there is something in-built in the human mind or psyche that tends us towards superstitions. I think we are losing it, but I think the ideas of luck and fate are really hard to eradicate."
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