The Myths and Fables of To-Day

Kisca, lara, mova, di:
Eggs, butter, cheese, bread,
Stick, stock, stone dead.”

The resemblance between the foregoing, and what is current among playfellows on this side of the water easily suggests that the boys of the “good Old Colony times,” so often referred to with a sigh of regret, brought their games and pastimes along with them. As now remembered, the doggerel charm runs as follows: —

“Eny, meny, mony might,
Huska, lina, bony tight,
Huldy, guldy, boo!”

In getting ready for a game of “tag,” “I spy,” or “hide and seek,” the one to whom this last magic word falls becomes the victim or is said to be “it.” So in like manner the rhymed formula, following, is employed in counting a child “out”: —

“One-ery, two-ery, ickery Ann,
Fillicy, fallicy, Nicholas, John,
Queever, quaver, English knaver,
Stinckelum, stanckelum, Jericho, buck.”

A more simple counting-out rhyme is this:

“One, two, three,
Out goes he (or she).”

“Tit, tat, toe,” is still another form, repeated with variations according to locality.

These few examples may serve to show that what the performers themselves regard only as a simple expedient in the arranging of their games, if they ever give the matter a thought, is really a survival of the belief in the efficacy of certain magical words, turned into rhyme, to propitiate success. If this idea had not been instilled into our children by long custom and habit, it is not believed that they would continue to repeat such unmeaning drivel. Yet, as childish as it may seem, it advances us one step in solving the intricate problem in hand; for here, too, “the child is father to the man.”

III

WEATHER LORE

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” —Shakespeare.

There is a certain class of so-called signs, that from long use have become so embedded in the every-day life of the people as to pass current with some as mere whimsical fancies, with others as possessing a real significance. At any rate, they crop out everywhere in the course of common conversation. Most of them have been handed down from former generations, while not a few exhale the strong aroma of the native soil itself.

Of this class of familiar signs or omens, affecting only the smaller and more casual happenings one may encounter from day to day, or from hour to hour, those only will be noticed which seem based on actual superstition. Many current weather proverbs accord so exactly with the observations of science as to exclude them from any such classification. They are simply the homely records of a simple folk, drawn from long experience of nature in all her moods. As even the prophecies of the Weather Bureau itself often fail of fulfilment, it is not to be wondered at if weather proverbs sometimes prove no better guide, especially when we consider that “all signs fail in a dry time.”

The following are a few examples selected from among some hundreds: —

When a cat races playfully about the house, it is a sign that the wind will rise.

It is a sign of rain if the cat washes her head behind her ears; of bad weather when Puss sits with her tail to the fire.

Spiders crawling on the wall denote rain.

If a dog is seen eating green grass it is a sign of coming wet weather.

Hang up a snake skin for rain.

If the grass should be thickly dotted in the morning with cobwebs of the ground spider, glistening with dew, expect rain. Some say it portends the exact opposite. This puts us in mind of Cato’s quaint saying that “two auguries cannot confront each other without laughing.”

If the kettle should boil dry, it is a sure sign of rain. Very earnestly said a certain respectable, middle-aged housewife to me: “Why, sir, sometimes you put twice as much water in the kettle without its boiling away.”

If the cattle go under trees when the weather looks threatening, there will be a shower. If they continue feeding, it will probably be a steady downpour.

A threatened storm will not begin, or the wind go down, until the turning of the tide to flood. Not only the people living along shore, but all sailors believe this.

Closely related to the above is the belief that a sick person will not die until ebb tide. When that goes out, the life goes with it. I have often heard this said in some seaports in Maine.

These popular notions, concerning the influence of the tides, be it said, have come down to us from a remote antiquity. The Pythagorean philosopher, indeed, stoutly affirmed that the ebbing and flowing of the sea was nothing less than the respiration of the world itself, which was supposed to be a living monster, alternately drawing in water, instead of air, and heaving it out again.

Again, an old salt, who had perhaps heard of Galileo’s theory, once tried to illustrate to me the movement of the tides by comparing it to that of a man turning over in bed, and dragging the bedclothes with him, his notion being that as the world turned round, the waters of the ocean were acted upon in a like manner.

To resume the catalogue: —

A bee was never caught in the rain – that is, if the bee scents rain, it keeps near the hive. If, on the contrary, it flies far, the day will be fair. The ancients believed this industrious little creature possessed of almost human intelligence.

When the squirrels lay in a greater store of nuts than usual, expect a cold winter.

If the November goose-bone be thick, so will the winter weather be unusually severe. This prediction appears as regularly as the return of the seasons.

Many meteors falling presage much snow.

“If it rains before seven,
It will clear before eleven.”

“You can tell before two.
What it’s going to do.”

There will be as many snow-storms in a winter as there are days remaining in the month after the first fall of snow.

Children are told, of the falling snow, that the old woman, up in the sky, is shaking her feather-bed.

High tides on the coast of Maine are considered a sign of rain.

When the muskrat builds his nest higher than usual, it is a sign of a wet spring, as this means high water in the ponds and streams.

“A winter fog
Will kill a dog,”

which is as much as to say that a thaw, with its usual accompaniments of fog and rain, is invariably productive of much sickness.

Winter thunder is to old folks death, and to young folks plunder.

“Sound, travelling far and wide,
A stormy day will betide.”

Do business with men when the wind is northwest – that signifies that a clear sky and bracing air are most conducive to alertness and energy; yet Hamlet says: “I am but mad north-northwest; when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.”

That was certainly a pretty conceit, no matter if it has been lost sight of, that the sun always dances upon Easter morning.