Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things Read online

  The Druids, whose Celtic name, dereu-wid, means “oak-wise” or “knowing the oak tree,” frequented oak forests as worshiping grounds. They believed that a person in possession of a four-leaf clover could sight ambient demons and through incantations thwart their sinister influence. Our information on the origin of this good luck charm (as well as on other beliefs and behaviors of that learned class of Celts who acted as priests, teachers, and judges) comes mainly from the writings of Julius Caesar and from Irish legend.

  Several times a year, Druids assembled in sacred oak forests throughout the British Isles and Gaul. There they settled legal disputes and offered human sacrifices for any person who was gravely ill or in danger of death from forthcoming battle. Huge wicker cages filled with men were burned. Though Druid priests preferred to sacrifice criminals, during periods of widespread law and order they incinerated the innocent. The immortality of the soul, and its transferal after death to a newborn, was one of their principal religious doctrines. Before terminating the forest ritual, Druids collected sprigs of mistletoe (believed to be capable of maintaining harmony within families) and scouted for rare clover.

  Four-leaf clovers are no longer rare. In the 1950s, horticulturists developed a seed that sprouts only clover with four lobes. The fact that today they are grown in greenhouses by the millions and cultivated by the score on kitchen windowsills not only strips the tiny herb of the uniqueness that is its luck but usurps the thrill and serendipity of finding one.

  Crossed Fingers: Pre-Christian Era, Western Europe

  If you cross your fingers when making a wish, or if you tell a friend, “Keep your fingers crossed,” you’re partaking of an ancient custom that required the participation of two people, intersecting index fingers.

  The popular gesture grew out of the pagan belief that a cross was a symbol of perfect unity; and that its point of intersection marked the dwelling place of beneficent spirits. A wish made on a cross was supposed to be anchored steadfastly at the cross’s intersection until that desire was realized. The superstition was popular among many early European cultures.

  Interestingly, the notion of trapping a fantasy until it becomes a reality is found in another ancient European superstition: tying a string around the finger. Today we label the practice a “memory aid,” a means of “psychological association” in which the string serves merely as a reminder of a task to be performed. To the Celts, the Romans, and the Anglo-Saxons, however, the string was thought to physically prevent the idea from escaping the body.

  Originally, in crossing fingers for good luck, the index finger of a well-wisher was placed over the index finger of the person expressing the wish, the two fingers forming a cross. While one person wished, the other offered mental support to expedite the desire. As time elapsed, the rigors of the custom eased, so that a person could wish without the assistance of an associate. It sufficed merely to cross the index and the middle fingers to form an X, the Scottish cross of St. Andrew.

  Customs once formal, religious, and ritualistic have a way of evolving with time to become informal, secular, and commonplace. As the ancient “knock oak” custom generalized to “knock wood” to today’s “knock whatever is handy,” so the “crossed fingers” of friends degenerated to a wisher crossing his own fingers and finally to today’s expression “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” with the well-wisher never actually doing so, and no one expecting him or her to.

  Thus, what was once deliberate and symbolic becomes reflexive and insignificant—though not obsolete. The contemporary street custom among young boys of hooking index fingers as a means of agreement on a deal is similar in form and content to the ancient and original crossed fingers of friends.

  Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down: 500 B.C., Etruria

  Today a “thumbs up” gesture is an expression of approval, courage, or stick-to-itiveness. But to a fourth-century B.C. Etruscan gladiator it meant something more: literally, “Spare his life.” And whereas “thumbs down” today suggests disapproval, in Etruscan times the disapproval was invariably terminal.

  While the meaning of the Etruscan “rule of the thumb” was adopted by the Romans and is the proximate origin of our modern gesture, the Egyptians developed a thumb language with meanings closer to our own. The Egyptian “thumbs up” signified hope or victory, while “thumbs down” meant ill will or defeat.

  Why, though, in these cultures did the thumb become the signaling finger?

  Roman historians in the time of Julius Caesar offered the first written explanation for the gestures. They observed that an infant often enters the world with its thumbs tucked within clutched fists. As the baby gradually responds to stimuli in its environment, the hands slowly unfold, releasing the thumbs upward. As if to come full circle, at the time of death the hands often contract, enclosing the downturned thumbs. Thus, to the Romans, “thumbs up” became an affirmation of life, “thumbs down” a signal for death.

  “God Bless You”: 6th Century, Italy

  “Gesundheit,” say Germans; “Felicità,” say Italians; Arabs clasp hands and reverently bow. Every culture believes in a benediction following a sneeze. The custom goes back to a time when a sneeze was regarded as a sign of great personal danger.

  For centuries, man believed that life’s essence, the soul, resided in the head and that a sneeze could accidentally expel the vital force. This suspicion was reinforced by the deathbed sneezing of the sick. Every effort was made to hold back a sneeze, and an inadvertent or unsuppressed sneeze was greeted with immediate good luck chants.

  Enlightenment arrived in the fourth century B.C. with the teachings of Aristotle and Hippocrates, the “father of medicine.” Both Greek scholars explained sneezing as the head’s reaction to a foreign or offensive substance that crept into the nostrils. They observed that sneezing, when associated with existing illness, often foretold death. For these ill-boding sneezes, they recommended such benedictions as “Long may you live!” “May you enjoy good health!” and “Jupiter preserve you!”

  About a hundred years later, Roman physicians extrapolated the lore and superstition surrounding a sneeze.

  The Romans preached the view that sneezing, by an otherwise healthy individual, was the body’s attempt to expel the sinister spirits of later illnesses. Thus, to withhold a sneeze was to incubate disease, to invite debility and death. Consequently, a vogue of sneezing swept the Roman Empire and engendered a host of new post-sneeze benedictions: “Congratulations” to a person having robustly executed a sneeze; and to a person quavering on the verge of an exhalation, the encouraging “Good luck to you.”

  The Christian expression “God bless you” has a still different origin. It began by papal fiat in the sixth century, during the reign of Pope Gregory the Great. A virulent pestilence raged throughout Italy, one foreboding symptom being severe, chronic sneezing. So deadly was the plague that people died shortly after manifesting its symptoms; thus, sneezing became synonymous with imminent death.

  Pope Gregory beseeched the healthy to pray for the sick. He also ordered that such well-intended though leisurely phrases as “May you enjoy good health” be replaced with his own more urgent and pointed invocation, “God bless you!” And if no well-wisher was around to invoke the blessing, the sneezer was advised to exclaim aloud, “God help me!”

  Pope Gregory’s post-sneeze supplications spread throughout Europe, hand in hand with the plague, and the seriousness with which a sneeze was regarded was captured in a new expression, which survives to this day: “Not to be sneezed at.” Today we voice it after a declamation in order to emphasize the gravity of our statement. But without knowledge of the expression’s history, the words themselves are puzzlingly vague.

  Broken Mirror: 1st Century, Rome

  Breaking a mirror, one of the most widespread bad luck superstitions still extant, originated long before glass mirrors existed. The belief arose out of a combination of religious and economic factors.

  The first mirrors, used by the ancient Egyptians
, the Hebrews, and the Greeks, were made of polished metals such as brass, bronze, silver, and gold, and were of course unbreakable. By the sixth century B.C., the Greeks had begun a mirror practice of divination called catoptromancy, which employed shallow glass or earthenware bowls filled with water. Much like a gypsy’s crystal ball, a glass water bowl—a miratorium to the Romans—was supposed to reveal the future of any person who cast his or her image on the reflective surface. The prognostications were read by a “mirror seer.” If one of these mirrors slipped and broke, the seer’s straightforward interpretation was that either the person holding the bowl had no future (that is, he or she was soon to die) or the future held events so abysmal that the gods were kindly sparing the person a glimpse at heartache.

  The Romans, in the first century A.D., adopted this bad luck superstition and added their own twist to it—our modern meaning. They maintained that a person’s health changed in cycles of seven years. Since mirrors reflect a person’s appearance (that is, health), a broken mirror augured seven years of ill health and misfortune.

  The superstition acquired a practical, economic application in fifteenth-century Italy. The first breakable sheet-glass mirrors with silver-coated backing were manufactured in Venice at that time. (See “Mirror,” page 229.) Being costly, they were handled with great care, and servants who cleaned the mirrors of the wealthy were emphatically warned that to break one of the new treasures invited seven years of a fate worse than death. Such effective use of the superstition served to intensify the bad luck belief for generations of Europeans. By the time inexpensive mirrors were being manufactured in England and France in the mid-1600s, the broken-mirror superstition was widespread and rooted firmly in tradition.

  Number Thirteen: Pre-Christian Era, Scandinavia

  Surveys show that of all bad luck superstitions, unease surrounding the number thirteen is the one that affects most people today—and in almost countless ways.

  The French, for instance, never issue the house address thirteen. In Italy, the national lottery omits the number thirteen. National and international airlines skip the thirteenth row of seats on planes. In America, modern skyscrapers, condominiums, co-ops, and apartment buildings label the floor that follows twelve as fourteen. Recently, a psychological experiment tested the potency of the superstition: A new luxury apartment building, with a floor temporarily numbered thirteen, rented units on all other floors, then only a few units on the thirteenth floor. When the floor number was changed to twelve-B, the unrented apartments quickly found takers.

  Norse god Balder (right), source of the number thirteen superstition; Norse goddess Frigga, crowned with crescent moon, source of the Friday the thirteenth superstition; American dollar bill symbols incorporate numerous items numbering thirteen.

  How did this fear of the number thirteen, known as triskaidekaphobia, originate?

  The notion goes back at least to Norse mythology in the pre-Christian era. There was a banquet at Valhalla, to which twelve gods were invited. Loki, the spirit of strife and evil, gate-crashed, raising the number present to thirteen. In the ensuing struggle to evict Loki, Balder, the favorite of the gods, was killed.

  This is one of the earliest written references to misfortune surrounding the number thirteen. From Scandinavia, the superstition spread south throughout Europe. By the dawn of the Christian era, it was well established in countries along the Mediterranean. Then, folklorists claim, the belief was resoundingly reinforced, perhaps for all time, by history’s most famous meal: the Last Supper. Christ and his apostles numbered thirteen. Less than twenty-four hours after the meal, Christ was crucified.

  Mythologists have viewed the Norse legend as prefiguring the Christian banquet. They draw parallels between the traitor Judas and Loki, the spirit of strife; and between Balder, the favorite god who was slain, and Christ, who was crucified. What is indisputable is that from the early Christian era onward, to invite thirteen guests for dinner was to court disaster.

  As is true with any superstition, once a belief is laid down, people search, consciously or unconsciously, for events to fit the forecast. In 1798, for instance, a British publication, Gentlemen’s Magazine, fueled the thirteen superstition by quoting actuarial tables of the day, which revealed that, on the average, one out of every thirteen people in a room would die within the year. Earlier and later actuarial tables undoubtedly would have given different figures. Yet for many Britons at the time, it seemed that science had validated superstition.

  Ironically, in America, thirteen should be viewed as a lucky number. It is part of many of our national symbols. On the back of the U.S. dollar bill, the incomplete pyramid has thirteen steps; the bald eagle clutches in one claw an olive branch with thirteen leaves and thirteen berries, and in the other he grasps thirteen arrows; there are thirteen stars above the eagle’s head. All of that, of course, has nothing to do with superstition, but commemorates the country’s original thirteen colonies, themselves an auspicious symbol.

  Friday the Thirteenth. Efforts to account for this unluckiest of days have focused on disastrous events alleged to have occurred on it. Tradition has it that on Friday the thirteenth, Eve tempted Adam with the apple; Noah’s ark set sail in the Great Flood; a confusion of tongues struck at the Tower of Babel; the Temple of Solomon toppled; and Christ died on the cross.

  The actual origin of the superstition, though, appears also to be a tale in Norse mythology.

  Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil—a gathering of thirteen—and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as “Witches’ Sabbath.”

  Black Cat: Middle Ages, England

  As superstitions go, fear of a black cat crossing one’s path is of relatively recent origin. It is also entirely antithetical to the revered place held by the cat when it was first domesticated in Egypt, around 3000 B.C.

  All cats, including black ones, were held in high esteem among the ancient Egyptians and protected by law from injury and death. So strong was cat idolatry that a pet’s death was mourned by the entire family; and both rich and poor embalmed the bodies of their cats in exquisite fashion, wrapping them in fine linen and placing them in mummy cases made of precious materials such as bronze and even wood—a scarcity in timber-poor Egypt. Entire cat cemeteries have been unearthed by archaeologists, with mummified black cats commonplace.

  Impressed by the way a cat could survive numerous high falls unscathed, the Egyptians originated the belief that the cat has nine lives.

  The cat’s popularity spread quickly through civilization. Sanskrit writings more than two thousand years old speak of cats’ roles in Indian society; and in China about 500 B.C., Confucius kept a favorite pet cat. About A.D. 600, the prophet Muhammad preached with a cat in his arms, and at approximately the same time, the Japanese began to keep cats in their pagodas to protect sacred manuscripts. In those centuries, a cat crossing a person’s path was a sign of good luck.

  Dread of cats, especially black cats, first arose in Europe in the Middle Ages, particularly in England. The cat’s characteristic independence, willfulness, and stealth, coupled with its sudden overpopulation in major cities, contributed to its fall from grace. Alley cats were often fed by poor, lonely old ladies, and when witch hysteria struck Europe, and many of these homeless women were accused of practicing black magic, their cat companions (especially black ones) were deemed guilty of witchery by association.

  One popular tale from British feline lore illustrates the thinking of the day. In Lincolnshire in the 1560s, a father and his son were frightened one moonless night when a small creature darted across their path into a crawl space. Hurling stones into the opening, they saw an injured black cat scurry out and limp into the adjace
nt home of a woman suspected by the town of being a witch. Next day, the father and son encountered the woman on the street. Her face was bruised, her arm bandaged. And she now walked with a limp. From that day on in Lincolnshire, all black cats were suspected of being witches in night disguise. The lore persisted. The notion of witches transforming themselves into black cats in order to prowl streets unobserved became a central belief in America during the Salem witch hunts.

  Thus, an animal once looked on with approbation became a creature dreaded and despised.

  Many societies in the late Middle Ages attempted to drive cats into extinction. As the witch scare mounted to paranoia, many innocent women and their harmless pets were burned at the stake. A baby born with eyes too bright, a face too canny, a personality too precocious, was sacrificed for fear that it was host to a spirit that would in time become a witch by day, a black cat by night. In France, thousands of cats were burned monthly until King Louis XIII, in the 1630s, halted the shameful practice. Given the number of centuries in which black cats were slaughtered throughout Europe, it is surprising that the gene for the color black was not deleted from the species…unless the cat does possess nine lives.

  Flip of a Coin: 1st Century B.C., Rome

  In ancient times, people believed that major life decisions should be made by the gods. And they devised ingenious forms of divination to coax gods to answer important questions with an unequivocal “yes” or “no.” Although coins—ideally suited for yes/no responses—were first minted by the Lydians in the tenth century B.C., they were not initially used for decisionmaking.

  It was Julius Caesar, nine hundred years later, who instituted the heads/tails coin-flipping practice. Caesar’s own head appeared on one side of every Roman coin, and consequently it was a head—specifically that of Caesar—that in a coin flip determined the winner of a dispute or indicated an affirmative response from the gods.