Sunday 18 June 2017

Some light-hearted derision

Popular Superstitions.

There does not live a man or woman (says a writer in the Philadelphia Weekly Press) who is not superstitious regarding something. You may not believe that to dream of seeing a red cow committing burglary is a forerunner of financial loss, or that meeting a cross-eyed lawyer on the steps of a church is an indication that you will have trouble with a blonde female in the near future; yet, if you examine yourself, you must acknowledge that when certain unusual things happen, a feeling of impending disaster takes possession of you.

[...] When I was a boy I heard a banshee. Our family was the sole owner of a banshee that was far from gregarious in its habits, and was of a very taciturn disposition. It sometimes kept its mouth shut for years, and during that time continued to accumulate a voice that it only used before a death. It always howled in a weird and woeful way a few nights before the death of any member of the family. On the night that I heard the banshee my favourite brother was lying ill in the next room. The moment I heard the first fiendish moan of the thing I knew that my brother was doomed - that it was all up with him unless the banshee was some other family's spook that had made a mistake in the number of the house.

There was no mistake, however, for I soon recognised the hiccough in the voice that was said to be the characteristic of our banshee. You may not believe it, but it is a fact that, three days later, on Sunday morning, as I was on my way to Sunday school, my poor favourite brother overtook me, ripped my jacket down the back and nearly basted the life out of me because I wouldn't lend him my catechism. He lived to thrash me many times afterwards. The fact that he didn't die is no reflection on the banshee; but shows on my brother's part a lack of consideration for a hard-working banshee that was trying to do its duty in faithfully bansheeing for the large family that owned it.

[...]

Reprinted in the Fifeshire Advertiser, 6th July 1888.

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