Customs
Categories:
MISCELLANEOUS
1402. Halloween cabbages are pulled and thrown against the owner's door
as a reminder of his laziness.
Southern Pennsylvania and Ohio.
1403. Shelled corn is thrown at every one--the significance not known.
Southern Pennsylvania.
1404. If a man is insulted and means to be revenged, he will bare his arm
and cut a cross in it with his knife, called a vengeance mark.
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Mountains of North Carolina.
1405. If you wash your face in dew before sunrise on May Day, you will
become very beautiful.
Alabama.
1406. Dry spots, where there is no dew, are called fairy rings.
Salem, Mass.
1407. Run round a fairy ring twice on Easter Sunday morning, and fairies
will arise and follow you.
Salem, Mass.
1408. The looking-glass is often turned with the face to the wall, or
taken out of the room during a thunder-storm, because quick-silver is so
bad to draw the lightning.
Bathurst, N.B.
1409. You are said to take the manners if you take the last of any kind
of food from a plate.
New England.
1410. Manners dish is the dish put on for show, and not expected to be
eaten.
Northern Ohio.
1411. Homoeopathic pills must be taken in odd numbers.
New England.
1412. When a meteor is seen, Catholics often say, A soul is ascending
into heaven.
1413. A present of a knife or any pointed instrument cuts friendship;
always sell it for a penny.
1414. A present of pins breaks friendship.
General in the United States.
1415. There was a superstition among old people who had never been much
abroad, in the town where I was born (Stratham, N.H.), that if they were
photographed they were likely to die soon after, and many rather objected
on that account.
Stratham, N.H.
1416. After sneezing, it is customary to say, God bless you.
General in the United States.
1417. A bit of steel, such as a needle, protects one from witches.
Brookline, Mass.
1418. A thief may be detected by a key turning in the Bible to Psalm i.
18-21, when the name of the guilty person is mentioned.
Labrador.