Related terms: folklore triskaidekaphobia friday 13
movie superstition
superstitions history origin black cat tridecaphobia goddess templar frigg freya
But once on a Friday ('tis ever they say),
A day when misfortune is aptest to fall. Saxe: Good Dog of Bretté, stanza 3
Sir Winston Churchill,
it's true, said, "Friday is my lucky day. I
was born, christened, married, and knighted on that day; and all my best
accidents have befallen me on a Friday".
Scots might prefer Friday for
marriage, and Scandinavians might tend to see Friday as lucky, but in
the traditions of most European countries, Friday is the unlucky day.
When Friday falls on the 13th of the month, as is well known (any
month that begins on Sunday will have a Friday the 13th), the day is
said to be especially unlucky and articles like these appear all over
the Net and in the media, particularly if not much news is about.
The number 13 has long been considered by superstitious Westerners to
be unlucky. Even today, many towns and suburbs don’t have 13 as a
street number, or 13th Street, and most hotels do not have rooms with 13
on the door. Many tall buildings do not have a 13th storey, with the
elevator going straight from Floor 12 to 14.
There are numerous origins given for the persistent superstition that
in the West, Friday
the 13th is an unlucky day. The most likely of these is that Jesus
Christ was killed on a Friday (Good Friday), and that
Judas Iscariot, the disciple who
betrayed him, was the thirteenth person of Jesus and the 12 apostles.
Just as tridecaphobia (or triskaidekaphobia) is purportedly the official
name for the morbid fear of the number thirteen, so various other fanciful
terms are given by different commentators for the phobia associated with
Friday the 13th, including
paraskavedekatriaphobia(or paraskevidekatriaphobia)and friggatriskaidekaphobia,
though one suspects these
were invented by journalists on slow news days. In Australia, where
people are not too bright and will bet on two flies crawling up a wall,
the New South Wales State Lotteries report that Friday the 13th is
always one of their biggest days, with turnover about 50 per cent up. Eric W Weisstein, by the way, shows that Friday is slightly more likely than any of the days
of the week to fall on the 13th.
Frigg's day
In ancient Rome Friday was known as dies Veneris, the day
dedicated to Venus, hence the French vendredi. In the northern
nations, the sixth day of the week was named (perhaps in imitation of
the Roman custom) for the goddess Frigg,
or Freya, mother of Balder;
in Old English it was called Frig-daeg.
It
has been suggested that the custom's origins lie in a Norse
myth. Twelve gods were having a banquet in Valhalla
when the mischievous Loki
gate-crashed the party as an uninvited 13th guest. There he
killed the beloved Balder the Beautiful,
the god of joy and gladness, by arranging for Balder's
twin brotherHod,
the blind god of darkness, to throw a branch (or dart) of mistletoe
at Balder, who was killed instantly. The whole Earth was immediately
plunged into darkness and mourning.
Friday begins the Sabbath for both Muslims Jews, and Muslims say that
Adam was created on a Friday and it was on Friday that Adam and Eve ate
the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and
on a Friday they died. According to Biblical lore, Noah’s Great Flood
began on a Friday and the Temple of Solomon was destroyed on the sixth
day of the week.
The doomed Apollo 13 space mission brought the
unlucky number to the forefront of the media. Apollo 13 was launched at 1313
hours (USA Central Time), from pad 39 (3 X 13) and was aborted on April 13, 1970, two
days after launch. It is worth noting that there are 13 moons and 13 menstrual cycles in a
year.
Philip le Bel
Philip le Bel and the Knights Templar
Although the Friday 13 superstition is older
than the 14th century, there exists a theory that it derives from Friday, October 13, 1307, when
King Philip IV of
France (le Bel, or ‘the good-looking’)
had all the Knights
Templar in France arrested, accused of heresy and tortured into making
confessions. It is unlikely, but interesting in its way.
Be that as it may, my favourite story
associated with unlucky Friday (whether the 13th or not), is
repeated widely around the Net, but seemingly without substantiation. One
website puts it thus, and I leave it with you to ponder:
"Sailors were particularly superstitious … often refusing to
ship out to sea on a Friday. According to legend, in the 18th century, the
British Navy commissioned a ship called the H.M.S. Friday in order to
quell the superstition. The navy selected the crew on a Friday, launched the
ship on a Friday and even selected a man named James Friday as the ship's
captain. Then, one Friday morning, the ship set off on its maiden voyage –
and disappeared forever."
If I find out if
there’s any truth in it, I’ll tell you next Friday the 13th
when I, like the rest of the experts, trot out the stock article.
Medieval
Unlucky Days
('dies Ægyptiacus; Egyptian Days')
"That peculiar phase of superstition which has regard to lucky or
unlucky, good or evil days, is to be found in all ages and climes, wherever
the mystery-man of a tribe, or the sacerdotal caste of a nation, has acquired
rule or authority over the minds of the people.
"All over the East, among the populations of antiquity, arc to be found
traces of this almost universal worship of luck. It is one form of that
culture of the beneficent and the maleficent principles, which marks the
belief in good and evil, as an antagonistic duality of gods. From ancient
Egypt the evil or unlucky days have received the name of 'Egyptian days.' Nor is it only in pagan, but in
Christian times, that this superstition has held its potent sway. No season of
year, no month, no week, is free from those untoward days on which it is
dangerous, if not fatal, to begin any enterprise, work, or travel. They begin
with New-Year's Day, and they only end with the last day of December. Passing
over the heathen augurs, who predicted fortunate days for sacrifice or trade,
wedding or war, let us see what our Anglo-Saxon forefathers believed in this
matter of days. A Saxon MS. (Cott. MS. Vitell, C. viii. fo. 20) gives the
following account of these Dies Mali - "Three days there are in the year,
which we call Egyptian days; that is, in our language, dangerous days, on any
occasion whatever, to the blood of man or beast. In the month which we call
April, the last Monday; and then is the second, at the coming in of the month
we call August; then is the third, which is the first Monday of the going out
of the month of December. He who on these three days reduces blood, be it of
man, be it of beast, this we have heard say, that speedily on the first or
seventh day, his life he will end. Or if his life be longer, so that he come
not to the seventh day, or if he drink some time in these three days, he will
end his life; and he that tastes of goose-flesh, within forty days' space his
life he will end.'
"In the ancient Exeter Kalendar, a MS. said to be of the age of Henry II,
the first or Kalends of January is set down as 'Dies Mala.'
"These Saxon Kalendars give us a total of about 24 evil days in the 365;
or about one such in every fifteen. But the superstition 'lengthened its cords
and strengthened its stakes; 'it seems to have been felt or feared that the
black days had but too small a hold on their regarders; so they were
multiplied.
'Astronomers say that six days of the year are perilous of death; and
therefore they forbid men to let blood on them, or take any drink; that is
to say, January 3rd, July 1st,
October 2nd, the last of April, August 1st, the last
day going out of December. These six days with great diligence ought to be
kept, but namely [mainly?] the latter three, for all the veins are then
full. For then, whether man or beast be knit in them within 7 days, or
certainly within 14 days, he shall die. And if they take any drinks within
15 days, they shall die; and if they eat any goose in these 3 days, within
40 days they shall die; and if any child be born in these 3 latter days,
they shall die a wicked death. Astronomers and astrologers say that in the
beginning of March, the seventh night, or the fourteenth day, let the blood
of the right arm; and iii the beginning of April, the 11th day,
of the left arm; and in the end of May, 3rd
or 5th (lay, on whether arm thou wilt; and thus, of all the year,
thou shalt orderly be kept from the fever, the falling gout, the sister
gout, and loss of thy sight.' Book of Knowledge, b. 1. p. 19.
"Those who may be inclined to pursue this subject more fully, will find
an essay on 'Day-Fatality,' in John.
Aubrey's Miscellanies, in which he notes the days lucky and unlucky, of the
Jews, Greeks, Romans, and of various distinguished individuals of later times.
"In a comparatively modern MS. Kalendar, of the time of Henry VI, in the
writer's possession, one page of vellum is filled with the following, of which
we modernise the spelling:
"These underwritten be the perilous day's, for to take any sickness in,
or to be hurt in, or to be wedded in, or to take any journey upon, or to begin
any work on, that he would well speed. The number of these days be in the year
32; they be these:
In January there be 7: 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th,
7th, 10th, and 15th.
In February be 3: 6th, 7th, and 18th.
In March be 3: 1st, 6th, and 8th.
In April be 2: 6th and 11th.
In May be 3: 5th, 6th, and 7th.
In June be 2: 7th and 15th.
In July be 2: 5th and 19th.
In August be 2: 15th and 19th.
In September be 2: 6th and 7th.
In October is 1: 6th.
In November be 2: 15th and 16th.
in December be 3: 15th, 16th, and 17th
"The copyist of this dread list of evil days, while apparently giving the
superstition a qualified credence, manifests a higher and nobler faith,
lifting his aspiration above days and seasons; for he has appended to the
catalogue, in a bold firm hand of the time ‘Sed tamen in Domino confide.'
(But, notwithstanding, I will trust in the Lord.) Neither in this Kalendar,
nor in another of the same owner, prefixed to a small MS. volume containing a
copy of Magna Charta, &c., is there inserted in the body of the Kalendar
anything to denote a 'Dies Mala.' After the Reformation, the old evil days
appear to have abated much of the ancient malevolent influences, and to have
left behind them only a general superstition against fishermen setting out to
fish, or seamen to take a voyage, or landsmen a journey, or domestic servants
to enter on a new place--on a Friday. In many country districts, especially in
the north of England, no weddings take place on Friday, from this cause.
According to a rhyming proverb, 'Friday's moon, come when it will, comes too
soon.' Sir Thomas Overbury, in his charming
sketch of a milkmaid, says. 'Her dreams are so chaste, that she dare tell
them; only a Friday's dream is all her superstition; and she consents for fear
of anger.' Erasmus dwells on the 'extraordinary inconsistency' of the English
of his day, in eating flesh in Lent, yet holding it a heinous offence to eat
any on a Friday out of Lent.
"The Friday superstitions cannot be wholly explained by the fact that it
was ordained to be hold as a fast by the Christians of Rome. Some portion of
its maleficent character is probably clue to the character of the
Scandinavian Venus Freya, the wife of Odin, and goddess of fecundity But we
are met on the other hand by the fact that amongst the Brahmins of India a
like superstitious aversion to Friday prevails. They say that 'on this day
no business must be commenced.' And herein is the fate foreshadowed of any
antiquary who seeks to trace one of our still lingering superstitions to its
source. Like the bewildered traveller at the cross roads, he knows not which
to take. One leads him into the ancient Teuton forests; a second amongst the
wilds of Scandinavia; a third to papal, and thence to pagan Rome; and a
fourth carries him to the far east, and there he is left with the conviction
that much of what is old and quaint and strange among its, of the
superstitious relics of our fore-elders, has its root deep in the soil of
one of the ancient homes of the race."
An unlucky day in Elizabethan England – the
day that Cain slew Abel.
Don't
slew anyone today.
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