Superstitions & Folklore

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

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