Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/55

Rh is, I believe, universally felt for the touch of the bishop’s right hand over the left. Thus, not long ago in Exeter a poor woman presented herself as a candidate for that rite to one of the clergy of that city, who remembered her having been confirmed three years before. On his taxing her with this she could not deny it, but pleaded that she had had the bishop’s left hand then, and had been so uneasy ever since that she did want to try her luck again! In the North of England, however, this evil is more defined; the unfortunate recipients of the left hand are doomed on the spot to a life of single blessedness. A friend tells me of an old Yorkshire woman who came for confirmation a second, if not a third time, from a different motive. She had heard, she said, “it was good for the rheumatiz!”

To pass on to marriage, the nucleus of a vast store of Folk-Lore The following rhymes show the importance of choosing an auspicious day for the ceremony; they express the popular belief of the county of Durham:—

This attribute of Thursday is curiously opposite to that which distinguishes it in Scandinavia, where, as Thor’s day, it is regarded as an auspicious day for marrying. The English tradition coincides, however, with the German, where it is held unlucky to marry on Thursday, probably because Thor is partly identified there with the devil.

As to Friday, a couple married on that day are doomed to lead a cat-and-dog life. But, indeed, a feeling is almost universal of the inauspiciousness of beginning any kind of work on this day, whether as the day of our Lord’s crucifixion or that on which traditionally our first parents are said to have fallen.