Cabinet of Curiosities - Day 17

Today we have some Luck Charms.

A few years ago, I was doing some research into the nature of good and bad luck for an Edinburgh and touring show. Obviously, I don't believe for a minute that there's an actual 'force' that creates or removes luck. Nor do I believe in things like Fate or Predestination. But I was interested to see if people behaved differently if they believed that luck was on their side. Often this sense of being lucky was related to some kind of totem - a pair of lucky socks, a treasured item given by someone special, a lucky pebble. The project had me doing all sorts of weird things - like walking under sets of ladders at fire stations, sleeping in rooms on the 13th floor, and smashing mirrors. It was an interesting project and the show went down very well with audiences.

And over the course of a year, I acquired quite a few good luck charms. In the photo there's an Italian mano cornuto (the red hand) and a silver cornicello, a Victorian ptarmigan's foot brooch, and a four leafed clover in a silver pendant.   

The mano cornuto - in which the hand makes a pair of horns such as you'd see among heavy metal fans at a gig - is not about saluting the Devil. It's the opposite. It's intended to ward off the Evil Eye. The charms are usually silver or red - the silver is sacred to the Moon goddess Luna and the red  is sacred to the sea goddess Venus (and were traditionally made with a red 'blood coral'). The cornicello has the same function - a representation of a bull's horn to ward off evil.

I was given the ptarmigan's foot brooch as a gift and laboured under the impression it was rabbit's foot until set right by people who know better than me. 

There was a time when people considered themselves of the Earth and not put on the Earth. Many indigenous peoples still do believe that we are connected to everything in the natural world (as do I). The rabbit or hare was seen as a symbol of fertility and good fortune (a left over of which is the Easter bunny) whose appearance coincided with the return of the Spring and abundance. Many Celtic tribes believed that because rabbits spent so much time underground they could communicate with gods and spirits, so, naturally, carrying a rabbit's foot would be lucky. 

The brooch is quite a grisly item for modern sensibilities though. And quite why a ptarmigan's foot should be lucky is lost on me.

It wasn't very lucky for the bird was it?

No one seems quite sure when the lucky four-leafed clover tradition began. A description from 1869 says that four-leafed clovers were 'gathered at night-time during the full moon by sorceresses, who mixed it with vervain and other ingredients, while young girls in search of a token of perfect happiness made quest of the plant by day'. But there's not much written lore any earlier than that. 

Interestingly, the clover has a connection to my family. We all know that the shamrock is the symbol of Ireland and also considered lucky. But what is shamrock? There's no actual plant called a shamrock - it's clearly a clover of some kind but, for a very long time, no one knew which species. It was a question that bugged naturalists and so, in 1893, a distant relative of mine called Nathaniel Colgan - an amateur naturalist from Dublin - carried out a major survey by asking people from all across Ireland to send in examples of shamrock. It turned out that the most common species identified (over 50% of respondents) was Lesser Clover (Trifolium dubium). When the survey was repeated in 1988, it found the same result. 

As the species name Trifolium suggests, clovers have three leaves so a four leafed specimen is a rare variant - or rare-ish anyway. The rate is about 1:5000 and the world record for finding the most four-leafed clovers in an hour is an impressive 166. You also find occasional clovers with more than four leaves - the most ever found on one stem was 56! 

How lucky is that?