Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (2 page)

When a sacred fowl was killed, the bird’s collarbone was laid in the sun to dry. An Etruscan still wishing to benefit from the oracle’s powers had only to pick up the bone and stroke it (not break it) and make a wish; hence the name “wishbone.”

For more than two centuries, Etruscans wished on unbroken clavicles. We know of this superstition from the Romans, who later adopted many Etruscan ways. Roman writings suggest that the practice of two people’s tugging at a clavicle for the larger half sprang from a simple case of supply and demand: too few sacred bones, too many people wishing for favors.

Why did the Etruscans not regard all the thin bones of a fowl’s skeleton as wishbones? That could have solved the problem of scarcity. According to Roman legend, the Etruscans chose the V-shaped clavicle for a symbolic reason: it resembles the human crotch. Thus, a symbol of the repository of life was employed to unravel life’s mysteries.

In all, we have inherited more than the Etruscan wishbone superstition. Etymologists claim that the expression “get a lucky break” initially applied to the person winning the larger half in a wishbone tug-of-war.

It was the Romans who brought the wishbone superstition to England, where the bone itself became known as a “merrythought,” for the “merry” wishes people typically made. Breaking the clavicle of a chicken was a well-established British tradition by the time the Pilgrims reached the New World. Finding the wooded northeastern shore of America populated with wild turkeys, which possessed clavicles similar to those of chickens, the Pilgrims instituted the turkey wishbone custom, making it part of Thanksgiving festivities. Colonial folklore holds that wishbones were snapped at the first Thanksgiving, celebrated in 1621. (See “Thanksgiving,” page 64.) Thus, by a circuitous route, an ancient Etruscan superstition became part of an American celebration.

Knock Wood: 2000
B.C
., North America

Children who play tree tag, in which touching a tree signifies safety, are unwittingly enacting a four-thousand-year-old custom begun by the Indians of North America.

In the modern game of tag, the base of any tree serves as a safe haven. Historically, though, the tree to touch was an oak, venerated for its strength, stately height, and numinous powers. Furthermore, when a person today ventures a hopeful prediction and superstitiously knocks wood, that wood ought only to be, traditionally, oak.

Cults surrounding the oak tree are ancient. They sprang up independently
among the North American Indians around 2000
B.C
. and later among the Greeks. Both cultures, observing that the oak was struck frequently by lightning, assumed it was the dwelling place of the sky god (the Indians) and the god of lightning (the early Greeks).

Cock and hen, ancient oracles. The expression “lucky break” applied to a person winning the larger half in a wishbone tug-of-war
.

The North American Indians carried their superstitious belief one step further. They held that boasting of a future personal accomplishment, battle victory, or windfall harvest was bad luck, a virtual guarantee that the event would never occur. A boast, deliberate or inadvertent, could be neutralized from sinister retribution by knocking on the base of an oak tree. In effect, the person was contacting the sky god, seeking forgiveness.

In Europe during the Middle Ages, Christian scholars argued that the knock-wood superstition originated in the first century
A.D
. and stemmed from the fact that Christ was crucified on a wooden cross. To knock wood hopefully was supposedly synonymous with a prayer of supplication, such as: “Lord, let my wish come true.” But modern scholars claim that there is no more truth to that belief than to the onetime boast that every Christian cathedral on the European continent possessed a piece of wood from the true cross. Thus, the Catholic veneration of wooden crucifix relics did not originate the custom of regarding wood with awe; rather, it mimicked, modified, and reinforced a much older, pagan view.

Other cultures revered, knocked on, and prayed to different kinds of trees. Whereas the American Indians and the early Greeks favored the oak, for the Egyptians the sycamore was sacred, and for ancient Germanic tribes the tree of choice was the ash. The Dutch, with a purist bent, adhered to the knock-wood superstition, but for them the kind of wood was unimportant; what mattered was that the wood be unvarnished, unpainted, uncarved, in every way unadorned. Tree cults were commonplace throughout history,
and they are the point of origin of many modern superstitious practices, such as kissing beneath mistletoe. (See page 68.)

In America, our custom of knocking on wood to keep a boast from boomeranging descended not from the homegrown American Indian superstition but from the later Greek belief, passed on to the Romans and then to the Britons. In time, when oak was not conveniently at hand, a rap on any type of wood sufficed. And in today’s high-tech world of plastics and laminates, the knock-wood superstition persists, even though real wood, of any kind, is not always in arm’s reach.

Four-Leaf Clover: 200
B.C
., British Isles

More than any other factor, the rarity of the four-leaf clover (normally, the clover is a three-leaf plant) made it sacred to the sun-worshiping Druid priests of ancient England.

The Druids, whose Celtic name,
dereu-wid
, means “oak-wise” or “knowing the oak tree,” frequented oak forests as worshiping grounds. They believed that a person in possession of a four-leaf clover could sight ambient demons and through incantations thwart their sinister influence. Our information on the origin of this good luck charm (as well as on other beliefs and behaviors of that learned class of Celts who acted as priests, teachers, and judges) comes mainly from the writings of Julius Caesar and from Irish legend.

Several times a year, Druids assembled in sacred oak forests throughout the British Isles and Gaul. There they settled legal disputes and offered human sacrifices for any person who was gravely ill or in danger of death from forthcoming battle. Huge wicker cages filled with men were burned. Though Druid priests preferred to sacrifice criminals, during periods of widespread law and order they incinerated the innocent. The immortality of the soul, and its transferal after death to a newborn, was one of their principal religious doctrines. Before terminating the forest ritual, Druids collected sprigs of mistletoe (believed to be capable of maintaining harmony within families) and scouted for rare clover.

Four-leaf clovers are no longer rare. In the 1950s, horticulturists developed a seed that sprouts
only
clover with four lobes. The fact that today they are grown in greenhouses by the millions and cultivated by the score on kitchen windowsills not only strips the tiny herb of the uniqueness that is its luck but usurps the thrill and serendipity of finding one.

Crossed Fingers: Pre-Christian Era, Western Europe

If you cross your fingers when making a wish, or if you tell a friend, “Keep your fingers crossed,” you’re partaking of an ancient custom that required the participation of
two
people, intersecting index fingers.

The popular gesture grew out of the pagan belief that a cross was a
symbol of perfect unity; and that its point of intersection marked the dwelling place of beneficent spirits. A wish made on a cross was supposed to be anchored steadfastly at the cross’s intersection until that desire was realized. The superstition was popular among many early European cultures.

Interestingly, the notion of trapping a fantasy until it becomes a reality is found in another ancient European superstition: tying a string around the finger. Today we label the practice a “memory aid,” a means of “psychological association” in which the string serves merely as a reminder of a task to be performed. To the Celts, the Romans, and the Anglo-Saxons, however, the string was thought to physically prevent the idea from escaping the body.

Originally, in crossing fingers for good luck, the index finger of a well-wisher was placed over the index finger of the person expressing the wish, the two fingers forming a cross. While one person wished, the other offered mental support to expedite the desire. As time elapsed, the rigors of the custom eased, so that a person could wish without the assistance of an associate. It sufficed merely to cross the index and the middle fingers to form an X, the Scottish cross of St. Andrew.

Customs once formal, religious, and ritualistic have a way of evolving with time to become informal, secular, and commonplace. As the ancient “knock oak” custom generalized to “knock wood” to today’s “knock whatever is handy,” so the “crossed fingers” of friends degenerated to a wisher crossing his own fingers and finally to today’s expression “I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” with the well-wisher never actually doing so, and no one expecting him or her to.

Thus, what was once deliberate and symbolic becomes reflexive and insignificant—though not obsolete. The contemporary street custom among young boys of hooking index fingers as a means of agreement on a deal is similar in form and content to the ancient and original crossed fingers of friends.

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down: 500
B.C
., Etruria

Today a “thumbs up” gesture is an expression of approval, courage, or stick-to-itiveness. But to a fourth-century
B.C
. Etruscan gladiator it meant something more: literally, “Spare his life.” And whereas “thumbs down” today suggests disapproval, in Etruscan times the disapproval was invariably terminal.

While the meaning of the Etruscan “rule of the thumb” was adopted by the Romans and is the proximate origin of our modern gesture, the Egyptians developed a thumb language with meanings closer to our own. The Egyptian “thumbs up” signified hope or victory, while “thumbs down” meant ill will or defeat.

Why, though, in these cultures did the thumb become the signaling finger?

Roman historians in the time of Julius Caesar offered the first written
explanation for the gestures. They observed that an infant often enters the world with its thumbs tucked within clutched fists. As the baby gradually responds to stimuli in its environment, the hands slowly unfold, releasing the thumbs upward. As if to come full circle, at the time of death the hands often contract, enclosing the downturned thumbs. Thus, to the Romans, “thumbs up” became an affirmation of life, “thumbs down” a signal for death.

“God Bless You”: 6th Century, Italy

“Gesundheit
,” say Germans;
“Felicità
,” say Italians; Arabs clasp hands and reverently bow. Every culture believes in a benediction following a sneeze. The custom goes back to a time when a sneeze was regarded as a sign of great personal danger.

For centuries, man believed that life’s essence, the soul, resided in the head and that a sneeze could accidentally expel the vital force. This suspicion was reinforced by the deathbed sneezing of the sick. Every effort was made to hold back a sneeze, and an inadvertent or unsuppressed sneeze was greeted with immediate good luck chants.

Enlightenment arrived in the fourth century
B.C
. with the teachings of Aristotle and Hippocrates, the “father of medicine.” Both Greek scholars explained sneezing as the head’s reaction to a foreign or offensive substance that crept into the nostrils. They observed that sneezing, when associated with existing illness, often foretold death. For these ill-boding sneezes, they recommended such benedictions as “Long may you live!” “May you enjoy good health!” and “Jupiter preserve you!”

About a hundred years later, Roman physicians extrapolated the lore and superstition surrounding a sneeze.

The Romans preached the view that sneezing, by an otherwise healthy individual, was the body’s attempt to expel the sinister spirits of later illnesses. Thus, to withhold a sneeze was to incubate disease, to invite debility and death. Consequently, a vogue of sneezing swept the Roman Empire and engendered a host of new post-sneeze benedictions: “Congratulations” to a person having robustly executed a sneeze; and to a person quavering on the verge of an exhalation, the encouraging “Good luck to you.”

The Christian expression “God bless you” has a still different origin. It began by papal fiat in the sixth century, during the reign of Pope Gregory the Great. A virulent pestilence raged throughout Italy, one foreboding symptom being severe, chronic sneezing. So deadly was the plague that people died shortly after manifesting its symptoms; thus, sneezing became synonymous with imminent death.

Pope Gregory beseeched the healthy to pray for the sick. He also ordered that such well-intended though leisurely phrases as “May you enjoy good health” be replaced with his own more urgent and pointed invocation, “God bless you!” And if no well-wisher was around to invoke the blessing, the sneezer was advised to exclaim aloud, “God help me!”

Pope Gregory’s post-sneeze supplications spread throughout Europe, hand in hand with the plague, and the seriousness with which a sneeze was regarded was captured in a new expression, which survives to this day: “Not to be sneezed at.” Today we voice it after a declamation in order to emphasize the gravity of our statement. But without knowledge of the expression’s history, the words themselves are puzzlingly vague.