Chapter Sun to Superstitions of S by Brewer's Readers Handbook

(31) Lap-Wing (The). A handmaid of the Virgin Mary, having purloined one of her mistress’s dresses, was converted into a lapwing, and condemned for ever to cry, Tyvit! Tyvit! (i.e. “I stole it! I stole it!”).

(32) Lion. The lion will not injure a royal prince.

Fetch the Numidian lion I brought over;
If she be sprung from royal blood, the lion
Will do her reverence, else he will tear her.
   —Beaumont (?) and Fletcher: The Mad Lover (1617).

(Beaumont died 1616.)

The lion will not touch the true prince.—Shakespeare: 1 Henry IV. act ii. sc. 4 (1598).

The lion hates the game-cock and is jealous of it. Some say because the cock wears a crown (its crest); and others because it comes into the royal presence “booted and spurred.”

The fiercest lion trembles at the crowing of a cock.—Pliny: Natural History, viii. 19.

According to legend, the lion’s whelp is born dead, and remains so for three days, when the father breathes on it, and it receives life.

(33) Lizard. The lizard is man’s special enemy, but warns him of the approach of a serpent. Lizards. When queen Elizabeth sent a sculptured lizard to the wife of the prince of Orange, the princess wrote back, “’Tis the fabled virtue of the lizard to awaken sleepers when a serpent is creeping up to sting them. Your majesty is the lizard, and the Netherlands the serpent. Pray God they may escape the serpent’s tooth!”—Motley: The Dutch Republic, pt. iv. 5.

(34) Magpie. To see one magpie is unlucky; to see two denotes merriment or a marriage; to see three, a successful journey; four, good news; five, company.—Grose.

Another superstition is: “One for sorrow; two for mirth; three, a wedding; four, a death.”

One’s sorrow, two’s mirth,
Three’s a wedding, four’s a birth,
Five’s a christening, six’s a dearth,
Seven’s heaven, eight is hell,
And nine’s the devil his ane se!’.
   —Old Scotch Rhyme.

In Lancashire, to see two magpies flying together is thought to be unlucky.

I have heard my gronny say, hoode os leefe o seen two owd harries as two pynots [magpies].—Tim Bobbin: Lancashire Dialect, 31 (1775).

When the magpie chatters, it denotes that you will see strangers.

(35) Man. A person weighs more fasting than after a good meal.

The Jews maintained that man has three natures—body, soul, and spirit. Diogenês Laertius calls the three natures body, phrên, and thumos; and the Romans called them manês, anima, and umbra.

There is a nation of pygmies. (See Pygmy, p. 885.)

The Patagonians are of gigantic stature.

There are men with tails, as the Ghilanes, a race of men “beyond the Sennaar;” the Niam-niams of Africa; the Narea tribes; certain others south of Herrar, in Abyssinia; and the natives in the south of Formosa. (See Tails, p. 1071.)

(36) Martin. It is unlucky to kill a martin.