Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/328

320 down to work in the morning, or enter the factory gate at the same time, feel certain that they will have trouble with their work on that day. I have never succeeded in discovering why this should be so.

The following are some of the persons or objects considered as unlucky for first-footers:—Thieves; persons who walked with their toes turned in; persons who were deformed, or whose senses were impaired—cripples, for instance; a stingy man; an immoral man; a false pretender to religion; the hangman; the gravedigger; the midwife (New Machar); women generally; and all who were suspected of being addicted to witchcraft; those whose eyebrows met, and males who had red hair. Among animals, the cat, the pig, and the hare.

The cat is universally held in detestation by first-footers in Aberdeenshire. In the parish of Rathen, the Rev. Dr. Cock tells me he has heard of the cat being immediately shut up whenever anyone dies in a house, to prevent its jumping over the corpse; because, if it was allowed to do so, and then got out, the first person who met it would be struck blind. So much for the cat's first-foot.

Various devices have been tried to render innocuous the meeting with persons or things of evil repute. If it is a person, the thing is to "have the first word of him". Some people spit; others make a cross on the road and spit. It is generally the custom to spit over the track of an unlucky animal when it presents itself. In Tarland, two twigs of rowan crossed and tied with a red thread is used as a specific. But in a great many places the people, very rightly thinking that prevention is better than cure, take means to prevent an unlucky first-foot presenting himself at all. Thus, in New Machar, when the midwife was seen approaching, people shut their doors and paid no attention to her knocks. In some places it was customary to fasten the house door of a reputedly unlucky person from the outside. For instance, my mother tells me that fifty years ago, when she was a girl, and went a good deal to Fort