Superstitions

PAGAN PRACTICES:

The word 'superstition' means, literally, 'surviving belief, ' and superstitions are all that survives of old magico-religious techniques for influencing (to one's own advantage, or to the detriment of others) the unseen forces that make things happen as they do. Although hidden in some of the Christian languages, the superstitious practices and beliefs of the Pennsylvania Germans, like those of other European colonists, goes back to the paganism of pre-Christian ancestors.

Here are a few:

* Put a scalded hand in hot water to ease the pain, and prevent blistering.

* To win at cards, tie a bat's heart to your right arm with red silk string.

* A girl can wash her freckles away with dew collected on May 1st.

* Put sugar in your armpit and then in your girl's drink. She won't be able to resist you.

* Smelling flowers that grow on a grave can destroy your sense of smell.

* Say 'Gesundheit!' (which means 'health') when another person sneezes, to prevent that person from sneezing his soul out and to drive away evil spirits that may have come out of him with his breath.

BAYOU WISDOM:

Along with their rich treasure trove of tales, songs, games, festivals, and foods, the Cajuns hedged their lives with countless superstitions. This common tendency of many an isolated, rural people was intensified by the very real threats of the Cajuns' swampy milieu...hunger, disease and physical dangers. Not unexpectedly, either, Cajun superstitions were a compound of many cultures and influences. To their own Catholic European stock they added black African and American Indian elements. This mixture was then shaped to fit the peculiar conditions of the bayou world.

Here are a few:

* If you lived too long in the swamps, you will become web-footed.

* If an alligator crawls under your house, it is an omen of death.

* Fishermen should beware of Letiche the monster, soul of an unbaptized infant who swims the bayous upsetting pirogues (dugout canoes).

* Fish bite quicker on Good Friday than any other day of the year.

* Cook cabbage on New Year's Day to have good fortune all year.

* When a snake bites you, race it to the water. If you beat it there and dip the wound into the water, the snake that bit you will die - not you.

* Anyone bothered by asthma should wear a muskrat skin over the lungs and children should sleep on mattresses of moss from Cypress trees to gain the strength of those trees.

* Keep your house tightly sealed at night to keep out not only deadly germs, but also loups-garous (werewolves).

* If you sleep in the moonlight, you will go crazy.

* Reading the Bible backward keeps ghosts from entering the house. Reading it forward prevents those ghosts already inside from harming you.

* If you are on a picnic and it starts to rain, make a cross with two sticks and put salt on top of it. The rain will instantly stop.

* Never eat both ends of a loaf of bread before you've eaten the middle, or you'll have trouble making ends meet in your life.

* Keep mirrors away from an infant, or the child become vain.

* If you put on your underwear wrong-side out, you must spit on it before changing it, or you'll have bad luck all day.

FISHERMEN'S SUPERSTITIONS:

The Greeks who settled in Florida were mostly sponge fishermen by trade and they carried with them their Mediterranean customs, some as old as civilization, almost unchanged, to the Gulf Of Mexico. They were each very careful to avoid any action that might bring bad luck to themselves or to their ship.

For example:

* If a captain was standing on the deck of his boat ready to to cast off, and a passerby asked him when he was going to set sail, the captain would postpone the trip until another day, because they believed that the question could only bring bad luck and misfortune to the boat and crew.

* Women in mourning clothes were feared by seamen. One widow in Tarpon Springs gained such an infamous reputation as a harbinger of bad luck, that even boats which had cast off would return to port if the woman suddenly appeared at the waterfront. They wouldn't leave until she left the docks. If she stayed all day, then they stayed all day. On the few occasions when a ship went out despite her presence, a diver drowned or the ships bottom fell out - there was always something bad that happened.
Finally, the spongers went to the priest and got him to tell the woman not to go to the waterfront until after the sponge boats had departed each day.

* Sponge fishermen also took steps to ensure themselves a safe and prosperous journey. Most of them wore gold crosses around their necks, or amulets pinned to their clothing. Because these objects had been blessed, they were believed to render their weares invulnerable.
Pieces of consecrated bread and vials of hold water were also carried on the sponge boats.

LUMBERJACK WAYS:

A visitor to an early 20th century camp described the lumberjacks sitting around the box stove in their barrack-like shanty enjoying a 'free-for-all' - playing checkers, poker or cooncan, reading, writing letters and talking.
He discovered from the talk that a good woodsman was proud of his prowess.
He kept his ax sharp enough to shave with and felled his timber with such precision that it would drive a tent pin into the ground.
He was good on a river, too.
He could roll a log with his feet, ride it through rapids and cleave logjams.

Less skilled choppers often caused accidents. Sideswiping branches (called 'widder-makers') from an ill-felled tree, too often injured crewman. It was common in this industry that the woods took a Sweede a day.
The most terrifying accident of all was getting rolled into the boiling maelstrom of river and racing logs when a logjam was broken.
Only sharp reflexes and instant decisions kept a man from death.

Such a decision earned Cruel Jimmy Holmes his name.
Seeing a friend caught in a logjam, he chopped off his leg and saved his life.
Many logging tales grew out of incidents like that.
They told of headless men, mangled bodies, and crushed skulls being fished up - and of others not found, whose ghosts were to haunt the rivers where they had disappeared for long, long after!