迷信在英国.ppt

* Superstition in English 英本三班 张含蕾 Good or bad luck Food Superstitions Table Superstitions Animal Superstitions Wedding Superstitions Good luck Lucky to touch wood. We touch, knock on wood, to make something come true. Lucky to meet a black cat. Black cats are featured on many good luck greetings cards and birthday cards in England. A horseshoe over the door brings good luck. But the horseshoe needs to be the right way up. The luck runs out of the horseshoe if it is upside down. Horseshoes are generally a sign of good luck and feature on many good luck cards. On the first day of the month it is lucky to say white rabbits, white rabbits white rabbits , before uttering your first word of the day. Bad luck Unlucky to walk underneath a ladder. Unlucky to open an umbrella in doors Seven years bad luck to break a mirror. The superstition is supposed to have originated in ancient times, when mirrors were considered to be tools of the gods. Unlucky to see one magpie, lucky to see two, etc. Unlucky to spill salt. If you do, you must throw it over your shoulder to counteract the bad luck Food Superstitions When finished eating a boiled egg, push the spoon through the bottom of the empty shell to let the devil out In Yorkshire, housewives used to believe that bread would not rise if there was a corpse (dead body) in the vicinity, and to cut off both ends of the loaf would make the Devil fly over the house! Table Superstitions If you drop a table knife expect a male visitor. If you drop a fork a female visitor. Leave a white tablecloth on a table overnight and expect a death. Animal Superstitions If a Sparrow enters a house it is an omen of death to one of the people who live there. In some areas it is believed that to avoid bad luck, any Sparrow caught must be immediately killed otherwise the person who caught it will die. In some parts of the UK meeting two or three Ravens together is considered really bad. One very English superstition concerns the tame