Whenever any one’s name-day happens on a Friday, that person selects a
piece of one of his cast-off garments, rubs thereon a few drops of his
own blood and saliva, and then burns the fragment of clothing. By so
doing he burns up also all the ill luck which else might have befallen
him during the next year. In southeastern Transylvania a rag mystically
dealt with as above is hung on a tree before sunrise on the day in
question; if it disappear before dawn of the next day, the person who
thus superstitiously celebrates the occurrence of his name-day on a
Friday may laugh at ill luck for a year.[445]
The Magyars begin no work on a Friday, for it is bound to miscarry;
neither do they give any milk out of the house on that day, for by so
doing they imagine the usefulness of the cow to be impaired. In Bihar
County, Hungary, a loaf of bread baked on Friday and impaled upon a stick
is accounted a safeguard against the spread of fire. The natives of this
district likewise entertain various curious fancies which are decidedly
unique. For example, when a newly born child is knock-kneed, the mother
regards it as a changeling. She therefore seats herself on the threshold
on a Tuesday or Friday, when witches are abroad, and peremptorily
addresses those creatures, demanding the restoration of her own child,
whom she believes they have stolen away. “Pfui! Pfui! you scoundrels!”
she exclaims, “give it back!”[446]
The Sicilians have a host of superstitions on this subject. The following
are among the more interesting items of their folk-lore relating to
Friday. On this day the owner of a rented house will not hand over
the keys to a new tenant, neither would the latter receive them. In
the southern part of the province of Palermo no thief dares steal on
a Friday, and the accuracy of this statement is corroborated by the
criminal statistics. Indeed, on this day the most timid householder may
journey in safety anywhere in the province, a fact which the sagacious
traveler in a land notorious for brigandage will not fail to note. This
immunity is not attributable to any special veneration for Freyja’s day,
but rather to a popular belief that thefts and other misdemeanors then
committed are sure of speedy detection. Laughter is thought to offend
the goddess, and the proverb runs, “He who laughs on Friday weeps on
Saturday.” In an anonymous manuscript in the municipal library of Palermo
appears a statement that whoever cuts out garments on a Tuesday or a
Friday runs the risk of making them too short and of losing the cloth.
Such clothing has little wear in it, for nothing begun on these days has
any durability.[447]
The inhabitants of ancient Gascony are no less credulous, as is apparent
from the following bits of Friday lore. Any one rash enough to start on
a journey on horseback runs especial risk of falling off his horse, and
of being drowned in attempting to ford a stream. It has even happened
that newly baked loaves have been found tinged with blood in the oven.
However, Friday is a good day for making vinegar, and the casks filled at
three o’clock in the afternoon of that day are found to be superior to
others. This is because our Lord, while on the cross, was given vinegar
to drink, mingled with gall, at three o’clock on the afternoon of Good
Friday.[448]
In Normandy, also, Friday is the favorite day for putting water in wine
or cider, for the people believe that on any other day the mixture would
become sour.[449]
According to a quaint Italian belief, whoever is born on a Friday will be
of sanguine temperament, passionate, light-hearted, and handsome. He will
delight in music, both vocal and instrumental, and will have a liking for
fine clothes. Moreover, he will be voluble in speech, though of unstable
character.[450]
The Tyrolese have a saying, “Whoever is born on a Friday must experience
trouble,” and they regard it as folly to marry on that day.[451]
The French people share fully the general distrust of the sixth day of
the week. This is shown by statistics of the Parisian theatres, where
there are produced on an average nearly two hundred new pieces annually,
and for many years not one of these has had its first performance on a
Friday.[452]
In Alsace Wednesday and Friday are unlucky days, and the former is never
chosen for a wedding or baptism. But of the two, Friday is the more
undesirable, and no business of importance is done thereon, nor any
journey undertaken. It is foremost among witch days, for evil spirits
are then abroad, and their activity on a Friday is proverbial. These
sentiments prevail in other German districts, and are entertained by
people of cultivation and learning. Indeed, it may be affirmed truly that
the possession of intellectual force is by no means incompatible with
a superstitious belief in the luck or misfortune of particular days.
The credulousness of the great Napoleon in this regard is well known.
Bismarck is said to have once written to his wife from Letzlingen, a
village of Prussian Saxony: “I have not had such good luck in hunting
to-day as I had three years ago; but then—it is a Friday.”[453] The
French statesman, Gambetta, is reported to have arranged his journeyings
and business affairs with reference to auspicious hours, as determined by
a professional reader of cards; and President Felix Faure, we are told,
is similarly credulous. Indeed, so prevalent are notions of this kind in
the French capital that tastefully ornamented cards with a list of “hours
to be avoided” find a ready sale in the streets.[454]
Among the Slavonians St. Prascovia, the modern successor of Venus and
Freyja, is believed to visit the peasants’ houses every Friday, and woe
to the luckless woman whom she then finds engaged in certain occupations.
Local tradition says that sewing, spinning, and weaving on that day are
sinful, and are especially distasteful to St. Prascovia, familiarly
known as “Mother Friday,” because the dust so produced gets into her
eyes. She is very apt to take revenge by inflicting upon the offenders
divers physical ailments, such as sore eyes, whitlows, or hang-nails. In
some districts the peasants retire earlier than usual on Friday evenings,
under the impression that Mother Friday will punish those whom she may
find awake when she makes her evening visits. These popular beliefs are
exemplified in the following tradition:—
There was once a certain woman who did not pay due reverence to Mother
Friday, but set to work on a distaff full of flax, combing it and
whirling it. She spun away until dinner-time, then sleep fell upon her.
Suddenly the door opened, and in came Mother Friday, before the eyes of
all who were there, clad in a white dress, and in such a rage! And she
went straight up to the woman who had been spinning, and scooped up from
the floor a handful of the dust that had fallen out of the flax, and
began stuffing and stuffing that woman’s eyes full of it! After she had
stuffed them full, she went off in a rage,—disappeared without saying a
word.
When the woman awoke, she began squalling, at the top of her voice,
about her eyes, but could not tell what was the matter with them. The
other women, who had been much frightened, began to cry out: “Oh, you
wretch, you! you’ve brought a terrible punishment on yourself from Mother
Friday.” Then they told her all that had taken place. She listened to it
all, and then began imploring: “Mother Friday, forgive me! Pardon me, the
guilty one! I’ll offer thee a taper, and I’ll never let friend or foe
dishonor thee, mother!”
“Well, what do you think? During the night, back came Mother Friday, and
took the dust out of that woman’s eyes, so that she was able to get about
again. It’s a great sin to dishonor Mother Friday, combing and spinning
flax, forsooth!”[455]
Professor Max Müller, in his “Contributions to the Science of Mythology”
(New York and Bombay, 1897), cites a tradition of the as yet little
known mythology of the Mordvinians, a Finnish race inhabiting the middle
Volga provinces of Russia. A woman who had been working all day long on
a Friday, baking bread for some orphan children, was taken up in a dream
to the sun, and when she was nearly exhausted, owing to the effects of
the heat, and to the rapidly increasing size of a piece of dough which
she had put into her mouth, she was accosted by Chkaï, the large-eyed
Mordvine sun-god, who told her that she was being punished because she
had baked bread for the orphans on a Friday. She was charged, moreover,
to tell all the people so. “But who will be such a fool as to believe
me?” asked the woman most disrespectfully. Thereupon Chkaï placed his
mark in scarlet and blue upon her forehead,—an emblem which is thought
to bring luck. And after that the Mordvine women were careful to bake no
bread, nor to do any other work, on a Friday.
It was a very early custom in England to appoint Friday as the day for
the execution of criminals, and until recently the same was true in this
country, but through the persistent efforts of the “Thirteen Club,”
of New York, whose object is the discouragement of certain popular
superstitions, the sixth day of the week has been partially relieved of
the odium of being “hangman’s day” in the United States.
A writer of an inventive turn of mind has suggested that Friday’s
unpopularity is partly owing to its being late in the week and money runs
short to the poor. Saturday being the close of the week, and pay-day as
well, there is no time then to be superstitious.
Some modern writers have displayed a misguided zeal in the collection
of statistical evidence that Friday has been a most auspicious day in
American history, and have cited among other events the surrender of
Burgoyne at Saratoga, and that of Cornwallis at Yorktown, as occurring
on that day. But will such an argument appeal with success to English
readers? If by general consent we should teach our children that Friday
was the luckiest day of the week, evidence in favor of this theory would
no doubt rapidly accumulate, and the new belief would soon be worth just
as much as the old one.