Handy Hexes

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF SUPERSTITIONS (269 pp.)--E. and M. A. Radford--Philosophical Library ($6).

Some Britons once firmly believed that a man could cure a cough by pulling a hair from his head, putting it between two pieces of buttered bread, and feeding it to a dog with the words: "Good luck, you bound. May you be sick and I be sound." Expected result: the dog trotted off coughing, the man recovered.

Breath-taking remedies for every dis-:ase abounded in Britain a couple of centuries ago. Part of the cure for consumption was to catch the tops of nine waves in a dish, then dump the contents on the head of the patient. Asthma could be dispatched by rolling spider webs into a ball and then swallowing them; epilepsy was dealt with by driving a nail into the spot where the sufferer had fallen. Nine lice eaten with a piece of bread & butter cured jaundice, and a poultice of sheep's dung cleared up erysipelas in no time.

Levelheaded readers will grin at these and other ancient beliefs, which London Daily Mirror Columnists Edwin and Mona Radford have catalogued in their Encyclopaedia of Superstitions. Anyone who touches wood to forestall bad luck, or avoids walking under ladders, or refuses to light three cigarettes on a match, is not permitted, however, to grin too widely. He should read on. Some authorities hold that "touching wood" signifies touching the Holy Cross for protection; others look still further back into the past and see it as an invocation of tree spirits. A ladder leaning against a wall forms a triangle, which is inviolable for the same reason that makes "three on a match" taboo: both represent the Trinity.

Superstitions sometimes cancel each other out. The Duke of Wellington, who believed that putting a pair of shoes on a table meant that their owner would be hanged, once fired a servant for jeopardizing a young woman's life in this manner. But British jockeys like to find their shoes on a table, turn white with worry when they find them on the floor. Winston Churchill reversed custom with his wartime V-for-Victory sign. Italians and Spaniards, who used the same two fingers to represent the horns of the devil, pointed them downward when they wanted to keep the devil in Hell, pointed them upward in the Churchillian manner when they wanted evil to triumph. Reminded of this fact by a distraught Cornish woman, undistraught Mr. Churchill went right ahead giving his sign in his own way.

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