"Omens are innumerable, but those that portend bad luck are far more common than those of good luck. It is difficult to think how our ancestors lived under such perpetual worry; everything they did, or saw, or heard meant something … I have strung together a few omens collected at a little country school in Norfolk: You start the day badly by breaking a mirror … You go into the garden, a cuckoo flies overhead,—a death—a crow flies round the house,—another death—the crow and cuckoo settle on the house where already a hawk has perched,—three deaths. You find your bees all dead,—you forgot to tell them of a death in the family last week.…Finally you go to bed, remember you have left a candle alight in a shut-up room, go down to put it out, find a coffin in the wick, and only glowing embers in the hearth,—two more deaths …"
Reverend Mark Taylor, Folklore Journal, 1929
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