Count your elephants and robins

Have you met an elephant today? Then there could be a nice surprise coming your way.

For such an encounter is sure to bring good luck, as will clutching a piece of a hangman's noose or wearing a spider in a bag around your neck until it dies - although it's not so lucky for the spider.

On the downside, if you met a cross-eyed person this morning or saved a man from drowning, then you are in for some bad fortune.

These pieces of folklore and hundreds of others are contained in a dictionary of British superstitions published yesterday.

And according to author Steve Roud, many of the most popular ones are not relics of the ancient past but relatively recent inventions.

Mr Roud, a librarian and amateur folklorist, said the theory that Friday the 13th is unlucky dates only from the Victorian age.

In the Middle Ages the number 13 was regarded as lucky because of Jesus and the 12 disciples.

But the Reformation in the 16th century declared this to be a Popish superstition and it was abandoned. Over time it became an unlucky number.

And while children are taught that Ring O' Roses comes from either the Black Death in the 14th century or the Great Plague of London in 1665, Mr Roud says there is no reference to it in historical documents until 1885.

Among the better known entries in The Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland are those about spilling salt, breaking a mirror and walking under a ladder.

Obscure ones include carrying a T-shaped bone from the skull of a sheep - which brings good luck - and receiving a Christmas card with a robin on it, a sign of something nasty to come.