Stockton and its neighbourhood, should be found also in the west of England. Mrs. Bray records them in her Traditions of Devonshire (vol. ii. p. 287), substituting “Christmas Day” for the “Sabbath Day,” and “fair and wise” for “blithe and bonny,” and says that they are in common use at Tavistock.
They do not correspond with the birth auguries in the Universal Fortune-teller, a book which has had, and indeed still has, a wide circulation among the lower orders of our countrymen.
Sunday—Great riches, long life, and happiness.
Monday—Unsuccessful, irresolute, easily imposed on, yet good-natured and obliging.
Tuesday—Passionate, implacable.
Wednesday—Studious, will excel in literature.
Thursday—Will attain riches and honour.
Friday—Of a strong constitution.
Saturday—An unlucky day but the child may come to good.
“Sunday children” are in Yorkshire deemed secure from the malice of evil spirits. In Germany, too, they are held to be privileged beings, but I am not aware that their immunities are so clearly defined as they are in Sussex, where they are warranted against hanging and drowning.
“Sunday children” in Denmark have prerogatives by no means to be coveted. Witness the following narration from Thorpe’s Mythology, vol. ii. p. 203: “In Fyen there was a woman who was born on a Sunday, and, like other Sunday’s children, had the faculty of seeing much that was hidden from others. But, because of this property, she could not pass by the church at night without seeing a hearse or a spectre—the gift became a perfect burden to her. She therefore sought the advice of a man skilled in such matters, who directed her, whenever she saw a spectre, to say, ‘Go to Heaven;’ but when she met a hearse, ‘Hang on.’ Happening some time after to meet a hearse, she, through lapse of memory, cried out, ‘Go to Heaven,’ and straightway the hearse rose in the air, and vanished. Afterwards, meeting a spectre, she said to it, ‘Hang on,’ when the spectre clung round her neck, hung on her back, and drove her down into the earth before it. For three days her shrieks were heard before the spectre would put an end to her wretched life.”
