Superstitions

 

Superstitions

I’ve always wondered why it was considered unlucky to walk under a ladder. First of all, is the ladder inside or outside? If outside, people sometimes say that it would be unlucky because you might have a pot of paint dropped on your head, assuming the person up the ladder was painting and not cleaning gutters or pruning the wisteria, in which case a tool might be dropped on your head. If it’s indoors, the paint and tool thing might still happen.

It seemed more logical to say that it was unlucky not to walk under a ladder, as walking round it might involve stepping into the road, placing yourself at risk of harm from traffic, or falling into a pyracantha bush or other similarly prickly vegetation.

However, while parading under a ladder, you might inadvertently knock it, unbalancing it and causing it and anyone on it to tumble down onto you. Ouch!

Anyway, the consensus is that walking beneath a ladder in public is to be avoided. If you adhere to the superstition, you can negate it in one or more of several ways. You could make a wish as you perambulate, or say ‘bread and butter’ or cross your fingers and keep them crossed until you see a dog. *(Why do we cross our fingers for good luck?) You could also spit three times between the rungs of the ladder but I can’t see how that would work. Surely you’d have to walk sideways or else turn your head and risk falling over?

The silliest suggestion to undo the bad luck is to walk backwards under the ladder again, so that would be back to just before the ladder, then turn round and walk backwards in the direction you want to proceed. Maybe the easiest thing to do would be to cross the road and walk on the other side. Why is it thought unlucky?

                                    The Pyramids at Giza

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

The Ancient Egyptians built pyramids as tombs for their pharaohs. They considered triangles to be sacred and the faces of a pyramid are triangular. They were designed to help the pharaohs’ ascent to heaven.

A ladder leaning against a wall forms a triangle and the Ancient Egyptians believed that good and bad spirits lived in the space between the ladder and the wall. It was forbidden to walk under a ladder, for fear of angering the spirits.

Early Christians adopted and adapted the superstition, saying that a ladder had rested against the cross on which Christ was crucified, and it became a symbol of betrayal and death. Walking under a ladder meant bad luck.

In mediaeval times, a condemned man climbed a ladder to reach the gallows. If someone walked under a ladder the superstition was that he would eventually be hanged. In the 17^th century, men were made to walk under a ladder on their way to the gallows.

                             John Brown's execution, in Texas, 1859
                             Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons 

*Crossing fingers for good luck is used in the UK and parts of Scandinavia but is less common in mainland Europe. It is a relatively recent superstition, the earliest record of it being made in 1912. It is obscurely linked to the ladder superstition. People, especially children, also cross their fingers if telling a white lie, and some regard it as a means of invalidating a promise.

 I remember we children crossing our fingers at school and I’m sure it was accompanied by ‘fainites’, a call for a respite from the rules of a game. Fainites is a southern English dialect word originating in the 14^th century and used in school slang from the 1870s. 

I wrote another post about ladders in 2009. It's more light-hearted.