The hand of destiny : the folk-lore and superstitions of everyday life / by C.J.S. Thompson.

  • Charles Thompson
Date:
[1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The hand of destiny : the folk-lore and superstitions of everyday life / by C.J.S. Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    were handed down from father to son and were regarded by their respective owners with as much superstition as if the person who had been born with it was still living. In early times, midwives used to profess to tell the fortune of the newborn child by inspection of the caul and if it was red they declared it portended good fortune, but if it was of leaden hue, it foretold evil. Lemnius states that if the caul be of a blackish colour it is an omen of ill-fortune to the child, but if of a reddish one it betokens everything that is good. Ambrose Pare, the famous French surgeon of the sixteenth century, appears to have had some belief in the superstition, for alluding to the caul he writes : “ Many times it happeneth, that the infant commeth into the world having his head covered or wrapped about with a portion of the secundine or tunicle wherein it is enclosed, especially when by the much strong and happy striving of the mother he commeth forth together with the water wherein it lyeth in the wombe and then the mydwives prophesie or foretell that the child shall be happy because hee is borne as it were with a hood on his head. But I suppose that it doth betoken health of body both to the infant and also to his mother, for it is a token of easie deliverance.” That cauls of newborn babies were highly valued and eagerly sought for in the sixteenth century, is substantiated by L'Etoile who relates that he saw two priests, “ the one a procurer, the other a sorcerer, fighting with their fists in the church of the Holy Ghost for one of these cauls and that the procurer proved himself the stronger in so much that the caul remained with him.”
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