One of the players on the local hockey team always had to be last man off the ice after warmups before the game. We were playing at another teams barn when the “battle of the last man off” started with a player from the opposing team who had the same superstion. Everyone was snickering as they popped on and off the ice.
I picked this up from an Austrian woman who would yell “Dead Sailor! Dead Sailor!” every time she saw someone attempt to light a cigarette of a candle. Like, she was genuinely alarmed. So now it bothers me, too.
I don’t suppose she told you the origin of this superstition? I found reference to it on website about nautical superstitions: “Light a cigarette with a candle and a sailor dies at sea”, but it doesn’t give any clue as to where it came from.
I’m an Archie 
In case you had any doubt how weird OCD is, I can tell you that the episode you’re talking about makes me cringe.
You’re getting warmer. I believe it was actuallyThe Boer War:
I think you are right - the gauntlet thing is the only explanation that ever occurred to me too, but, the truth is, I was posting at nearly 4 am and thought it best to keep my remarks short (to miminimise the risk of me rambling mindlessly)
After all, as you say, the notion of having a duel with oneself would be jsut too confuzzling!
“Shoes on table”, I see has been mentioned. How interesting that it is also Italian. I’m told the assocation is to do with laying out a corpse.
Oh, and I think we have one about not opening up an umbrella indoors. Yes, we can have a one-minute break while you all joke about about Scottish weather, if you like
Black cats crossing one’s path - in the U.K. that is lucky, but I am sure I read as a child that the reverse is the case in the USA Is that right?
If giving someone a wallet or purse as a gift (purse in this sense meaning not large bag, but little leather thingy to carry money in ) then one must put money of some kind in it. Any little coin will do, but it is very bad for the recipient if you fail to do this.
In Scotland, that is called, “hanselling” the purse and I always thought it might just be a local thing, but found that a friend from the south of England knew that one too (haha - and she had thought it was only her family or her locality too).
I love hearing about folk superstitions.
One must never give an empty purse. Putting a coin in indicates your wish that the recipient’s purse never be empty.
Also, a gift of knives must include a coin, too, but I can’t remember why.
Correct. A black cat is bad luck here. My superstitious mother used to roll up her sleeves to counteract the bad luck whenever a black cat crossed her path.
Speaking of counteracting bad luck, i is also regarded by some as bad luck if you spill the salt. To counteract this, you have to toss a pinch of salt back over your left shoulder.
The wallet/purse superstitions made me think of another:
On New Year’s Day, a meal of black-eyed peas and greens brings good financial luck in the coming year. (The greens are said to represent dollars, and the peas represent coins.)
It sounds like this may be linked with the notion of soaking chillblains in urine; cat’s urine is best. Sounds gross, right? But if you look at an OTC chillblain remedy, the main active ingredient is uric acid, and cat’s urine has very high levels of urea.
Hmm, not so dumb, these old wives…
I was taught (growing up in Chattanooga, TN) that the greens were for wealth and the blackeyes were for health.
Up here (I’m in NE Ohio now), they have sauerkraut and pork for new years, but I’m not sure why.
IIRC, the coin is supposed to be given back to the giver in payment for the knives, because the gift of a knife “cuts” the ties between them.
If you’re thinking of the same superstition as me, you have it backwards. Receiving a knife as a gift is supposed to be bad luck, so the recipient should give the giver a penny, so that they’re not getting a gift, they’re buying it.
Gamers are superstitious to the point of bone-headedness about their dice.
I know people who will roll all their dice, and pick the ones that roll highest to play with. Hello, what do you think dice are for? Maybe to provide random numbers??? I acknowledge that not all dice are fair, but it’s not like you’re going to determine which ones are biased by rolling them once, anyway.
And, of course, there are also those who think they’re smarter than that above, and will roll all their dice and pick the lowest to play with, because those dice will be “due” more high rolls. This is, of course, the Gambler’s Fallacy, but, trust me, they don’t want to hear about that.
And I have otherwise intelligent, reasonable friends who will tell you with a straight face that they have “bad dice luck.” Don’t you dare roll your eyes, because they have the anecdotes to prove it! And they will spend the next hour telling you blow-by-blow descriptions of the bad die rolls they have made.
When I learned to smoke in high school I was also taught that you counted by letters to the cigarette that stood for the person you loved. Mine was ‘E’ so I turned over the 5th one in. Then you had to save that one for last and not bum it out.
The thing about that superstition is more than once I forgot it was turned over and lit it in the dark, thus lighting the filter while inhaling. That really sucks. You get a big flame and a nasty inhale, plus you just wrecked your last cigarette! After the second or third time I stopped that tradition.
The explanation I’ve always heard for the three cigarettes with a match thing is that, unless you use a real long match, whoever holds it will get burnt. It doesn’t refer to lighters (which already were around in the XIX century).
One I find real funny is that in Latin countries, the unlucky day is Tuesday the 13th. Tuesday is the day of Mars and 13 the number of Mars, so Romans considered a Tuesday 13 as a “day of war”. When they lost their warrior drive, it suddenly became a real bad day.
Nobody south of Dover had ever worried about Friday the 13th until it became sinonymous with slasher movies.
Here is a Cecil column on the healing properties of saliva. Given that I’ve seen dogs and cats lick their wounds, there’s probably a grain of truth of truth in the ex-MIL’s superstition. Still, your own saliva would work as well, and antibiotic cream would work much better.
Re the dropped glove: does no one remember the cliche woman dropping her hankie to flirt with a man? This sounds as if it was originally an etiquette rule for women, and someone dropped the “for women” part.
My husband laughed at me for being superstitious because whenever I get a glass of drinking water from the sink, I fill it three times and dump it out before filling it to drink and was furious at him for just filling the glass. I got to laugh right back at him when we saw a report that said to do just that to get drinking water that does not contain as many heavy metal contaminants.
My friend always turns his pop top on the can to face the rim. I discovered this was to identify his can. I took to turning mine to the right if I am drinking from a can in a group. We imagined a world where everyone has their one pop top angle.
How about, if you happen to be a beekeeper, or otherwise have bees living in your garden, when a death occurs in the household, you must go and inform the bees of this fact, this being only polite. yes, a bit of WTF there, I know. Catch me voluntarily approaching bees - huh!
New Year one - opening windows and door to let the old year out and to let the new one in.
Oh, and I think this one might be widespread - that it is not good luck for your first sight of the month’s new moon to be through glass. A bit impractical, that one.
Just recalled some more from my rural youth:
If you plant a weeping willow, you will die when the willow grows large enough to shadow your grave.
A bird flying into the house is a bad omen.
If you get a shiver down your spine it’s because a rabbit ran across your (future) grave.
I’m of Ukrainian origin, 1st generation American born. When I was a kid, when someone moved into a new house, there would be a house warming party. All the adults would have their pockets full of change and each one would, at whaterver point they chose, fling the all change into the air (usually in the livingroom area, IIRC), and all us kids would scramble to pick it all up. You got to keep whatever you managed to grab.
I don’t really know what that was all about, though. I do remember that every time an adult would arrive, all us kids would hover around him/her just WAITING for them to toss the change. They’d tease us for a while by jingling the change in their pockets from time to time, getting us kids all riled up, until they decided the moment was right.
The last time I saw a version of this done, I was a teenager and my family had moved into a new home. My dad had a full bar built in the basement with a fishing net over the bar area. At the house warming party, all the adults that came over, threw paper money into that net (I guess us kids were all to old at that point for them to do the change thing). The money stayed there for as long as we had that house.
I dunno if it was a Ukrainian thing, or just my crazy family’s thing. I don’t know if it was a tradition, or a superstitious thing, but thought I’d share with y’all anyway.