I may mention here that the four-leaved clover
was reputed to be a preventative against madness, and against being
drafted for military service.
One very ancient and persistent superstition had regard to the direction
of movement either of persons or things. This direction should always be
with the course of the sun. To move against the sun was improper and
productive of evil consequences, and the name given to this direction of
movement was _withershins_. Witches in their dances and other pranks,
always, it was said, went _withershins_. Mr. Simpson in his work,
_Meeting the Sun_, says, "The Llama monk whirls his praying cylinder in
the way of the sun, and fears lest a stranger should get at it and turn
it contrary, which would take from it all the virtue it had acquired.
They also build piles of stone, and always pass them on one side, and
return on the other, so as to make a circuit with the sun. Mahommedans
make the circuit of the Caaba in the same way. The ancient dagobas of
India and Ceylon were also traversed round in the same way, and the old
Irish and Scotch custom is to make all movements _Deisual_, or sunwise,
round houses and graves, and to turn their bodies in this way at the
beginning and end of a journey for luck, as well as at weddings and
other ceremonies.
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