This is only a modified form of the superstition that a wen, or any strumous swelling, can be cured by touching it with the dead hand of a man who has just been publicly hanged.
I once saw a young woman led on to the scaffold, in the Old Bailey, for the purpose of having a wen touched with the hand of a man who had just been executed.
A strong prejudice has long existed against burying on the northern side of the church. In many churchyards the southern side will be found full of graves, with scarcely any on the northern side.
I have sought to discover, if possible, the origin of this prejudice, but I have not been able to trace it to any well-defined feeling. I have been answered, “Oh, we like to bury a corpse where the sun will shine on the grave;” and, “The northern graveyard is in the shadow, and cold;” but beyond this I have not advanced.
We may infer that this desire to place the remains of our friends in earth on which the sun shines, is born of that love which, forgetting mortality, lives on the pleasant memories of the past, hoping for that meeting beyond the grave which shall know no shadow. The act of planting flowers, of nurturing an evergreen tree, of hanging “eternals” on the tomb, is only another form of the same sacred feeling.
It is, or rather was, believed, in nearly every part of the West of England, that death is retarded, and the dying kept in a state of suffering, by having any lock closed, or any bolt shot, in the dwelling of the dying person.
A man cannot die easy on a bed made of fowls’ feathers, or the feathers of wild birds.
Never carry a corpse to church by a new road.
Whenever a guttering candle folds over its cooling grease, it is watched with much anxiety. If it curls upon itself it is said to form the “handle of a coffin,” and the person towards whom it is directed will be in danger of death.
Bituminous coal not unfrequently swells into bubbles, these bubbles of coal containing carburetted hydrogen gas. When the pressure becomes great they burst, and often throw off the upper section with some explosive force. According to the shape of the piece thrown off, so is it named. If it proves round it is a purse of money; if oblong, it is a coffin, and the group towards which it flew will be in danger.