History Forum / General / British History / January 2008

My mother was incredibly superstitious. She was forever flinging spilt
salt over her shoulder, crossing her fingers or chanting incantations
for luck. Particularly sharp in my mind are two rhymes that she would
say out loud whenever the occasion demanded. The first, on seeing a
dropped pin was: "See a pin and pick it up and all day long you'll
have good luck".. This was to be said quickly because apparently you
weren't supposed to breath while stooping to pick up the pin and
chanting the rhyme. As far as I was able to determine, the days on
which my mother was lucky enough to find a pin were not noticably
fortunate. Save for the finding of the pin that is. To my mind, the
verse would have been more accurate if it went thus: "See a pin and
pick it up and all day long you'll have a pin". That would have made a
lot more sense.

The second verse I remember was chanted whenever my mother saw a white
horse. The verse was usually again chanted out loud, whoever was
present, while wetting a finger and dragging it in the form of a cross
on a shoe. The verse went like this: "White horse, white horse, bring
me good luck; today or tomorrow I'll pick something up." The
"something" in the verse was non-specific, presumably it referred to a
pin. Either that or a virus from licking unwashed fingers.

I'm not superstitious myself, but I do habitually count magpies, when
they gather in the field outside my window; mentally running through
the song from the 1970's children's program as I count. I tell myself
that the number of magpies can't possibly have a bearing on how my
life will turn out but I can't help it. It is a compulsion that I have
obviously picked up from my mother.

The problem here is that I am a little confused over the rules for
counting magpies. Does one count the magpies spotted in a single
sitting, as it were? Or is the method accumulative? Do you tot up all
the magpies you spot in one day? I can't find anywhere on the internet
that explains this. And how is the rhyme to be interpreted? One and
Two are fairly explanatory, as are

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