I have heard of the same belief in Suffolk, where an old woman expressed her dismay at having a robin come “weeping, weeping,” as she called it, at her door, and related two instances in her own family in which it had been a warning of death.
The following list of death omens has been communicated to me from Sussex. It is interesting to compare them with our north-country portents. An unusual rattling of the church door, a heavy sound in a funeral bell, or the appearance of the ignis-fatuus or will-o’-the-wisp, the cry of the screech-owl or three caws of a carrion crow, are thought in that county to presage death. So is the breaking of a looking-glass, which they say in Denmark is a sign of utter ruin to the family in which it takes place. Again, if a dead body continues limp, and does not stiffen, another death will soon take place. And it is accounted unlucky to take the first snowdrop or primrose into a house, or blackthorn blossom, or broom in the month of May. My informant heard a Sussex cottager scold her child for taking a single snowdrop into the house, and, asking the reason, was told it was a death token, and looked “for all the world like a corpse in its shroud,” and “that it kept itself quite close to the ground, seeming to belong more to the dead than the living.” As for primroses, they used to be sought for to strew on graves and dress up corpses, and the black-thorn was thought to represent a strange commingling of life and death in its white flowers on the bare twigs unclothed with leaves. On a lady (the wife of the clergyman) entering a Sussex cottage with a branch of it in blossom, the poor woman snatched it out of her hand and flung it out of doors, saying, “How could you think, Ma’am, of bringing that death token into my house?” This belief extends to Germany, where the blackthorn is said to spring from the corpse of a heathen slain in battle. The broom was especially baleful if used for sweeping. I am told of an old Sussex gentleman who strictly forbade the use of green brooms during the month of May, and justified himself by repeating the adage—
If you sweep the house with broom in May,
You’ll sweep the head of that house away.
