Current Superstitions

Author(s): Fanny Dickerson Bergen

Genre(s): *non-fiction, Social Science (culture & Anthropology)

Narrators: Denny Sayers (d. 2015), Roolynninms, Caitlin Kelly, Claire Goget, Silver, Andrew Lebrun, Scherzando, Kelli Robinson, Michael Corley

Number of Chapters: 21

Length: 4 hours and 36 minutes

Language: English

No matter how enlightened, chances are you've been raised around superstitious lore of one kind or another. Fanny Dickerson Bergen was one of the original researchers of North American oral traditions relating to such key life events and experiences as babyhood and childhood, marriage, wishes and dreams, luck, warts and cures, death omens and mortuary customs, and "such truck," as Huck Finn would say.

You'll be surprised at how many of these old saws you'll know. Here's a quote from Chapter One, Babyhood:

Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is full of grace,
Wednesday’s child is sour and sad,
Thursday’s child is merry and glad,
Friday’s child is loving and giving,
Saturday’s child must work for a living;
But the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is blithe and bonny, good and gay.
--Baldwinsville, N. Y.

All of these readings are as short as 5 minutes and no longer than 15 minutes, with plenty of pithy one-liners in the form of proverbs, always given with the locale they came from in Canada or the United States (with clear influences in British tradition). (summary by Denny Sayers)