Note 9 — VI.—SUPERSTITIONS AS TO VARIOUS SUBJECTS.
Reading edition
A correspondent of Notes and Queries writes: “Wife-beating, to the effusion of blood, may be a novel method of securing luck in herring-fishery, but to draw blood is practised in some of the fishing villages on the north-east coast of Scotland, under the belief that success follows the act. The act must be performed on New Year’s day, and the fortune is his only who is the first to shed blood. If the morning of the New Year is such as to allow the boats of the village to put to sea, there is quite a struggle as to which boat will reach the ground first, so as to gain the coveted prize, the first to shed blood of the year. If the weather is unfavorable for fishing, those in possession of guns—and a great many of the fishermen’s houses possess one—are out, gun in hand, along the shore, before daybreak, in search of some bird or wild animal, no matter how small, that they may draw blood, and thus make sure of one year’s good fortune.”
Mr. Latouche in his Travels in Portugal (1875) narrates a story illustrative of the national belief in the wehr wolf (lobis-homem), in which a Portuguese “wise woman” is reported as saying that “if a lobis homem can murder and drink the blood of a newly born child, the enchantment ceases and she is a lobis-homem no longer.” ↑