Superstitions: Grist in the Mill of the Mind

   Superstitions are, by their nature, snapshots of the chaos of the human condition perhaps.  Most have no reason beyond perpetuating fragments of behaviour that have long ago been separated from the reasons why they were begun.  The more you look at them, the more they are found to be elusive, frustrating, sometimes frightening fragments of something else, a bigger thing which will never be fully revealed. (I mused on much the same issued in my previous post on the subject The Slippery World of Superstitions.)

Modern Workplace Initiations

   Are modern superstitions any more explicable than historic ones.  Do they explain the frightening forces behind the everyday world in a satisfactory fashion.  Sometimes the actions of the superstition themselves are far from harmless. Take the following incident from Kirriemuir which ended up in a case in the Court of Session of Edinburgh.  (It was reported in The Scotsman, 28th November 1960 and reported in a subsequent issue of Folklore by A. M. Honeyman).  A 15 year old employee in Kirriemuir was subject to an initiation joke which backfired badly.  He was told to stand against a door, for the purpose of getting measured.  While doing so, someone behind the door hit it very hard with a hammer, and the reverberation resulted in the apprentice sustaining a linear fracture of the skull.  While I don't know who this unfortunate lad was, what happened in the court case, or indeed who his employers were, this type of initiation for new employees is common throughout the U.K. and possibly the world.  Many poor novice employees in Dundee must have have a marked aversion for the state in Albert Square, for there impassively sat the poet Mr Robert Burns and it was common form at one time for these hapless lads (and lasses?) to be sent with messages and requests to Mr R. Burns in that location. (Sometimes innocents were sent out for a 'long stand'.)

Mr Burns, shortly after his installation on a plinth in Albert Square, Dundee.

 George M. Martin, Dundee Worthies (1934) records a number of pointless tasks which newly employed workers  would have to endure at the behest of experienced employees in their various trades in the burgh.  He begins with his own experience as an engineering apprentice at Messrs. Gourlay and Brothers when he was asked by a leading hand to go to the moulding shop for  the 'cubilie', actually a furnace which contained ten tons of molten metal.  If he had gone on the mission, the lead worker there would have sent him to another department for an equally irrelevant object or to complete an impossible task. Among mythical tools newly employed people were sent to fetch included the 'half round square', the 'soft pointed chisel', the 'brass faced file', and so on.

   Among the rites/tests recorded among local employers and industries were the following:

• Dundee Harbour Engineers.  New starters were sent for the graving dokkey, which was actually a huge manual key for the sluice gates; transporting of which would cause major difficulty.
• Bakers.  The apprentice was sent from bakery to bakery for a 'crystal chafer' or 'crystal chafer for the funeral shortbread' and was given a huge, heavy bad full of oddments, bricks, etc., which he had to handle with care as the contents were exceptionally brittle.
• Hatters.  Same pranks as the bakers, but the object fetched was a 'glass iron for the hats'.
• Painters.  Sent for the red stripe from a barber's pole.
• Jewellers.  Apprentices had to polish a piece of metal with 'Water of Ayr' stone until it smelled of onions.
• Certified Accountant new lads were sent to jute spinners to ask for a card breakers and were shown a monstrous, huge, multi ton machine.
• Plumbers' apprentices were sometimes marked with a smudge and told to take a length of brass to a chemists to get it vaccinated.

Superstitions About Birth on the Brink of the Modern Age

   Stray pieces of folklore attached to fundamental aspects of human life are likely to be universal.  Sometimes local lore is unexpectedly recorded and has the appearance of being, if not unique, then a tantalising variant on a more generalised superstition.  In her autobiography Look Back in Wonder (1966), Dr Elizabeth Bryson describes attending at her first birth at the turn of the century in Dundee.  All went well with the procedure and she handed the newborn child over to the group of women who had also been present at the birth.  Mother and child were in fine health and it was nearing midnight.  Dr Bryson asked if one of the women would mind washing the infant.  But she was met by an exclamation of horror and one of those present swore she had never done so and would not now perform this task as it was the duty of a doctor or a nurse.  Why should this superstition exist?  Is it something to do with not wanting to be the person responsible for crossing the sacred boundary between the ante and post natal worlds?

  Birth, as the border zone between life and non-existence, was always regarded with superstitious awe.  Those who specialised in assisting delivery had almost magical abilities.  In Scotland formerly midwives were known as howdies or howdy wives.

Older Lore

   Many historic superstitions revolved around commonplace objects which were found in rural homes. Looking for lost objects on Angus farms in past centuries was often time accomplished by 'spaeing by the girdle', the girdle being the kitchen implement used, for toasting cakes. For the purposes of divination it was heated until red hot then placed in a dark place with something on top of it.  The whole gathered company then trooped past and each in their turn took a piece of the object placed on top, each under the belief that Satan himself would carry off whichever guilty party among them was responsible for the theft of the missing object.  Guilt usually led to the thief breaking down and owning up before the dread encounter took place.

  Frederick Cruickshank tells us about  a 'cure' for cattle which were thought to be wasting away.  This was effected by placing a freshly cut green sod in the stall before the beast.  Connection with religious observance was also common place.  Certain times of the year were marked by special ceremonies, sometimes aligned by older festivals. Rood-Day, May 3rd, may have inherited some traits belonging to the Celtic May Day celebration, Beltane.  In Angus, on the evening preceding Rood Day, a piece of a branch, cut and peeled and bound round with red thread, was placed over the byre-door, to avert the evil eye.

Bell Tower, Navar Kirk

Some Sources Consulted

Rev. Frederick Cruickshank, Navar and Lethnot, The History of a Glen Parish in the North-East of Forfarshire (Arbroath, 1899).

Alexander Hislop, The Book of Scottish Anecdote (8th edn., Glasgow & London,n.d.).

A. M. Honeyman, 'Fools' Errands for Dundee Apprentices,' Folklore, Vol 70, No. 1 (Mar. 1959), pp. 334-336.

A. M. Honeyman, ' "Measuring" Kirriemuir's Apprentices,' Folklore, Vol. 71, No. 4 (Dec. 1960), p. 251.

A. M. Honeyman, 'Midwifery in Dundee,' Folklore, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Summer 1966), p. 132.

James Murray Mackinlay, Ancient Church Dedications in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1910).