Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (4 page)

Umbrella Indoors: 18th Century, England

Bad luck superstitions surrounding the umbrella began with the Egyptians, who imparted their intricately designed umbrellas of papyrus and peacock feathers with religious significance. These early umbrellas were never intended to protect against rain (which was rare and a blessing in arid Egypt), but served as sunshades in the blistering heat of day. (See “Umbrella,” page 318.)

The Egyptians believed that the canopy of the sky was formed by the body of the celestial goddess Nut. With only her toes and fingertips touching the earth, her torso spanned the planet like a vast umbrella. Man-made umbrellas were regarded as small-scale earthly embodiments of Nut and suitable only to be held above the heads of nobility. The shade cast by an umbrella outdoors was sacred, and for a commoner to even accidentally step into it was considered sacrilegious, a harbinger of bad luck. (This belief was reversed by the Babylonians, who deemed it an honor to have even a foot fall into the umbra of the king’s sunshade.)

Folklorists claim that the superstitious belief that opening an umbrella indoors augurs misfortune has a more recent and utilitarian origin. In eighteenth-century London, when metal-spoked waterproof umbrellas began to become a common rainy-day sight, their stiff, clumsy spring mechanism made them veritable hazards to open indoors. A rigidly spoked umbrella, opening suddenly in a small room, could seriously injure an adult or a child, or shatter a frangible object. Even a minor accident could provoke unpleasant words or a serious quarrel, themselves strokes of bad luck in a family or among friends. Thus, the superstition arose as a deterrent to opening an umbrella indoors.

Today, with the ubiquitousness of radio, television, and newspaper weather forecasts, the umbrella superstition has again been altered. No longer is it really considered a bad luck omen to open an umbrella indoors (though it still presents a danger). Rather, on a morning when rain is in the forecast, one superstitious way to assure dry skies throughout the day is to set off for work toting an umbrella. On the other hand, to chance leaving the umbrella at home guarantees getting caught in a downpour. Subtle, unobtrusive, and even commonplace, superstitious beliefs infiltrate our everyday conversations and actions.

Walking Under a Ladder: 3000
B.C
., Egypt

Here is one superstition whose origin appears to be grounded in obvious and practical advice: walking under a ladder, after all, should be avoided since a workman’s plummeting tool could become a lethal weapon.

The true origin of the superstition, though, has nothing to do with practicality. A ladder leaning against a wall forms a triangle, long regarded by many societies as the most common expression of a sacred trinity of gods. The pyramid tombs of the pharaohs, for example, were based on triangular planes. In fact, for a commoner to pass through a triangulated arch was tantamount to defiance of a sanctified space.

To the Egyptians, the ladder itself was a symbol of good luck. It was a ladder that rescued the sun god Osiris from imprisonment by the spirit of Darkness. The ladder was also a favorite pictorial sign to illustrate the ascent of gods. And ladders were placed in the tombs of Egyptian kings to help them climb heavenward.

Centuries later, followers of Jesus Christ usurped the ladder superstition, interpreting it in light of Christ’s death: Because a ladder had rested against the crucifix, it became a symbol of wickedness, betrayal, and death. Walking under a ladder courted misfortune. In England and France in the 1600s, criminals on their way to the gallows were compelled to walk under a ladder, while the executioner, called the Groom of the Ladder, walked around it.

Ancient cultures invariably had antidotes to their most feared superstitions. For a person who inadvertently walked under a ladder, or who was forced to do so for convenience of passage, the prescribed Roman antidote was the sign of the
fico
. This nullifying gesture was made by closing the fist and allowing the thumb to protrude between the index and middle fingers. The fist was then thrust forward at the ladder. Any person interested in applying the antidote today should be aware that the
fico
was also a Roman phallic gesture, believed to be the precursor of the extended middle finger, whose accompanying incantation is not all that different in sound from
fico
.

Evil Eye: Antiquity, Near East and Europe

A “dirty look,” a “withering glance,” “if looks could kill,” and “to stare with daggers” are a few common expressions that derive from one of the most universal of fears, the evil eye.

It has been found in virtually all cultures. In ancient Rome, professional sorcerers with the evil eye were hired to bewitch a person’s enemies. All gypsies were accused of possessing the stare. And the phenomenon was widespread and dreaded throughout India and the Near East. By the Middle Ages, Europeans were so fearful of falling under the influence of an evil glance that any person with a dazed, crazed, or canny look was liable to be burned at the stake. A case of cataracts could spell death.

The evil eye is one of the most universally dreaded bad luck beliefs, found in virtually all cultures
.

How did such a belief originate independently among so many different peoples?

One of the most commonly accepted theories among folklorists involves the phenomenon of pupil reflection: If you look into a person’s eyes, your own minuscule image will appear in the dark of the pupil. And indeed, our word “pupil” comes from the Latin
pupilla
, meaning “little doll.”

Early man must have found it strange and frightening to glimpse his own image in miniature in the eyes of other tribesmen. He may have believed himself to be in personal danger, fearing that his likeness might lodge permanently in, and be stolen by, an evil eye. This notion is reinforced by the belief among primitive African tribes less than a century ago that to be photographed was to permanently lose one’s soul.

The Egyptians had a curious antidote to an evil stare—kohl, history’s first mascara. Worn by both men and women, it was applied in a circle or oval about the eyes. (See “Eye Makeup,” page 223.) The chemical base was antimony, a metal, and while soothsayers prepared the compound for men to smear on, women concocted their own antimony formulas, adding preferred secret ingredients.

Why should mascara be an evil-eye antidote?

No one today is certain. But darkly painted circles around the eyes absorb sunlight and consequently minimize reflected glare into the eye. The phenomenon is familiar to every football and baseball player who has smeared black grease under each eye before a game. The early Egyptians, spending considerable time in harsh desert sunlight, may have discovered this secret themselves and devised mascara not primarily for beautifying purposes, as is the standard belief, but for practical and superstitious ones.

Stork Brings Baby: Antiquity, Scandinavia

To account for the sudden appearance of a new baby in a household, Scandinavian mothers used to tell their children that a stork brought it. And to account for the mother’s much-needed bed rest, the children were told that before the bird departed, it bit the mother’s leg.

The need to offer young children some explanation for the arrival of a new baby (especially in a time when infants were born at home) is understandable. But why a stork?

Early Scandinavian naturalists had studied storks and their nesting habits on home chimney stacks. The birds, in their long, seventy-year life span, returned to the same chimney year after year, and they mated monogamously. Young adult birds lavished great attention and care on elderly or infirm parents, feeding them and offering their extended wings for support. In fact, the ancient Romans, impressed with the stork’s altruistic behavior, passed legislation called
Lex Ciconaria
, the “Stork’s Law,” compelling children to care for their aged parents. The Greeks were equally impressed. Their term
storge
, the origin of our word “stork,” means “strong natural affection.”

Thus, the stork’s gentleness, along with the convenience of its nesting in a home’s chimney, made it an ideal creature to deliver a new arrival down the chimney. For centuries, the old Norse legend was popular throughout Scandinavia. It was nineteenth-century Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, through his fairy tales, who popularized the myth worldwide.

Covering a Yawn: Antiquity, Middle East

Today, covering the mouth when yawning is considered an essential of good manners. But the original custom stemmed not from politeness but from fear—a fear that in one giant exhalation the soul, and life itself, might depart the body. A hand to the lips held back the life force.

Ancient man had accurately observed (though incorrectly interpreted) that a newborn, struggling to survive, yawns shortly after birth (a reflexive response to draw additional oxygen into the lungs). With infant mortality extraordinarily high, early physicians, at a loss to account for frequent deaths, blamed the yawn. The helpless baby simply could not cover its mouth with a protective hand. Roman physicians actually recommended that a mother be particularly vigilant during the early months of life and cover any of her newborn’s yawns.

An ancient belief that the breath of life might escape the body during a yawn established the custom of covering the mouth
.

Today it is also considered good manners when yawning to turn one’s head. But courtesy had nothing to do with the origin of the custom, nor with the apology that follows a yawn. Ancient man had also accurately observed that a yawn is contagious to witnesses. Thus, if a yawn was dangerous to the yawner, this danger could be “caught” by others, like the plague. The apology was for exposing friends to mortal danger.

Modern science has explained the yawn as the body’s sudden need for a large infusion of oxygen, especially on awakening, when one is physically exhausted, and in the early stages of strenuous exercise. But there still is no physiological accounting for the contagiousness of yawning. We know only that the sight of a person yawning goes to the visual center of the brain and from there is transmitted to the yawn center. Why such a particular pathway should exist is as mysterious to us today as was the yawn itself to ancient man.

Chapter 2

By Custom

Marriage Customs:
A.D
. 200, Northern Europe

Among the Germanic Goths, a man married a woman from within his own community. When women were in short supply, he captured his bride-to-be from a neighboring village. The future bridegroom, accompanied by a male companion, seized any young girl who had strayed from the safety of her parental home. Our custom of a
best man
is a relic of that two-man, strong-armed tactic; for such an important task, only the best man would do.

From this practice of abduction, which literally swept a bride off her feet, also sprang the later symbolic act of
carrying the bride over the threshold
of her new home.

A best man around
A.D
. 200 carried more than a ring. Since there remained the real threat of the bride’s family’s attempting to forcibly gain her return, the best man stayed by the groom’s side throughout the marriage ceremony, alert and armed. He also might serve as a sentry outside the newlyweds’ home. Of course, much of this is German folklore, but it is not without written documentation and physical artifacts. For instance, the threat of recapture by the bride’s family was perceived as so genuine that beneath the church altars of many early peoples—including the Huns, the Goths, the Visigoths, and the Vandals—lay an arsenal of clubs, knives, and spears.

The tradition that the bride stand to the left of the groom was also more
than meaningless etiquette. Among the Northern European barbarians (so named by the Romans), a groom placed his captured bride on his left to protect her, freeing his right hand, the sword hand, against sudden attack.