The financier and businessman, who was found after his suicide to have committed high-level fraud, is thought to have used his international marketing knowhow to help propagate the
myth in order to increase demand for his product and fuelled the fire of this superstition still further.
WEAR A TOAD AROUND THE NECK TO WARD OFF THE PLAGUE
Thankfully the need for protection against the Black Death waned so long ago that superstitions like this one have been consigned to the history books. The mascots and charms
that many of us still carry around have their roots in a time when people didn’t just use them for good luck, but because they hoped they might save their lives. It is a challenge in the
modern age to imagine what life must have been like during the great plagues of medieval and Renaissance Europe. Overcrowding, extreme poverty and the lack of clean water or proper sanitation
systems meant that life was precarious even before the arrival of a deadly epidemic. Once the bubonic plague arrived, carried byrats and passed to humans via flea bites, it
swept through entire populations, killing 70 per cent of its victims within two to seven days.
The Great Plague of London, which struck in 1665, killed between 75,000 and 100,000 people, representing almost a quarter of the city’s population. It was the last in a string of plague
epidemics that began in 1499 so people knew all about the horrors that lay ahead. In their desperation to avoid contagion, most who could afford to fled the city, leaving the poor in the decrepit,
rat-infested slums that were the hotbed of the disease. Those left behind leapt on anything that offered the chance of protection; as journalist Daniel Defoe describes in his 1722 fiction
A Journal
of the Plague Year
there was a craze for ‘charms, philtres, exorcisms, amulets, and I know not what preparations against the plague; as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of
possession of an evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures written on them, as particularly
the word Abracadabra, formed in a triangle or pyramid.’
Other methods documented at the time included painting a red cross on the door of infected houses with the words ‘Lord have mercy upon us’; the application of a recently killed
pigeon to the buboes (grossly enlarged lymphatic glands) or the tying of a frog around the neck to draw out the disease.
Defoe’s words sum up the futility of their efforts: ‘The poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead carts and
thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks.’
NEVER BRING LILIES INDOORS
Flowers have been imbued with historical and religious significance for thousands of years and the lily appears in folklore dating back to antiquity.
According to Greek legend the flower was formed from drops of the Goddess Hera’s spilt breast milk and was a symbol of purity and fecundity. Lilies were woven together with ears of wheat to
form crowns worn by brides at marriage ceremonies where they represented their innocence and blessed their fertility. In Roman tradition, lilies were presented to young women by their suitors
during the celebration of the spring solstice, and Slavic pagan mythology also has the lily as a symbol of fertility and new life where they were ritually given as gifts at the spring celebration
of Ostara, the time of renewal, which eventually became the Christian Easter.
According to Christian legend, lilies sprang from Eve’s tears when she and Adam were banished from the garden of Eden. Borrowing from the earlier mythology linking the lily to motherhood
and purity, they are also associated withthe Virgin Mary and are said to represent her tears. Early paintings depicting the annunciation show the
myth in order to increase demand for his product and fuelled the fire of this superstition still further.
WEAR A TOAD AROUND THE NECK TO WARD OFF THE PLAGUE
Thankfully the need for protection against the Black Death waned so long ago that superstitions like this one have been consigned to the history books. The mascots and charms
that many of us still carry around have their roots in a time when people didn’t just use them for good luck, but because they hoped they might save their lives. It is a challenge in the
modern age to imagine what life must have been like during the great plagues of medieval and Renaissance Europe. Overcrowding, extreme poverty and the lack of clean water or proper sanitation
systems meant that life was precarious even before the arrival of a deadly epidemic. Once the bubonic plague arrived, carried byrats and passed to humans via flea bites, it
swept through entire populations, killing 70 per cent of its victims within two to seven days.
The Great Plague of London, which struck in 1665, killed between 75,000 and 100,000 people, representing almost a quarter of the city’s population. It was the last in a string of plague
epidemics that began in 1499 so people knew all about the horrors that lay ahead. In their desperation to avoid contagion, most who could afford to fled the city, leaving the poor in the decrepit,
rat-infested slums that were the hotbed of the disease. Those left behind leapt on anything that offered the chance of protection; as journalist Daniel Defoe describes in his 1722 fiction
A Journal
of the Plague Year
there was a craze for ‘charms, philtres, exorcisms, amulets, and I know not what preparations against the plague; as if the plague was not the hand of God, but a kind of
possession of an evil spirit, and that it was to be kept off with crossings, signs of the zodiac, papers tied up with so many knots, and certain words or figures written on them, as particularly
the word Abracadabra, formed in a triangle or pyramid.’
Other methods documented at the time included painting a red cross on the door of infected houses with the words ‘Lord have mercy upon us’; the application of a recently killed
pigeon to the buboes (grossly enlarged lymphatic glands) or the tying of a frog around the neck to draw out the disease.
Defoe’s words sum up the futility of their efforts: ‘The poor people found the insufficiency of those things, and how many of them were afterwards carried away in the dead carts and
thrown into the common graves of every parish with these hellish charms and trumpery hanging about their necks.’
NEVER BRING LILIES INDOORS
Flowers have been imbued with historical and religious significance for thousands of years and the lily appears in folklore dating back to antiquity.
According to Greek legend the flower was formed from drops of the Goddess Hera’s spilt breast milk and was a symbol of purity and fecundity. Lilies were woven together with ears of wheat to
form crowns worn by brides at marriage ceremonies where they represented their innocence and blessed their fertility. In Roman tradition, lilies were presented to young women by their suitors
during the celebration of the spring solstice, and Slavic pagan mythology also has the lily as a symbol of fertility and new life where they were ritually given as gifts at the spring celebration
of Ostara, the time of renewal, which eventually became the Christian Easter.
According to Christian legend, lilies sprang from Eve’s tears when she and Adam were banished from the garden of Eden. Borrowing from the earlier mythology linking the lily to motherhood
and purity, they are also associated withthe Virgin Mary and are said to represent her tears. Early paintings depicting the annunciation show the
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