Chapter IX: Unlucky Days

The observance of lucky and unlucky days is a familiar phenomenon in primitive society and among peoples of archaic civilization. Under the attenuated form of a survival, the superstition still lingers in civilized and Christian lands. The reasons for the assignment of a good or an evil character to certain days are usually quite obscure; and even where explanations are provided, these are, as a rule, explanations after the event. The attempt to provide a satisfactory origin for them insensibly widens out into an effort to account for the genesis of the great body of popular and anonymous superstitions.

Probably the commonest source of the belief in unlucky days is to be sought in that erroneous association of ideas which underlies so much of savage magic and savage religion. If an event, fortunate or unfortunate, has taken place on a certain day, the notion easily arises that all actions performed on the recurrence of the day will have a similarly favourable or unfavourable issue. Among the Tshi of west Africa, the most unlucky day is the anniversary of the Saturday on which Osai Tutu was slain in an ambush near Acromanti in 1731.[857] In modern Macedonia the superlative ill-luck attending Tuesday is explained by some as due to the fact—historically true—that Constantinople was taken by the Turks on this day of the week.[858] The _dies religiosi_, or unlucky days, of the Roman calendar included the anniversary of the battle of the Allia, _dies Alliensis_ (July 18), when the republic had suffered grave misfortune. The same date was also observed as the anniversary of the destruction of the Fabii at the Cremera, 477 B.C.[859] After the assassination of Julius Cæsar a decree was made that the Ides of March (March 15) should be called _parricidium_, and henceforth should be observed as an unlucky day.[860] The superstitions which in Christian times have gathered about Friday—at once a holy and an unlucky day—are connected with it as the anniversary of Christ’s Passion. In the Middle Ages people were accustomed to date on Friday all the unfortunate events of religious tradition and history. On that day Adam sinned and was driven from Paradise, Cain killed his brother Abel, John the Baptist was beheaded, and Herod slew the Holy Innocents. It was also the day of the Deluge, the Confusion of Tongues, and the infliction of the Plagues upon Egypt. Synchronisms of this sort had a great attraction to the mediæval mind, and numerous lists of them are preserved in old manuscripts.[861] There is a Jewish superstition, reaching back to the Talmud, that it is lucky to begin an undertaking on Tuesday, because, in describing the third day of creation, it is said, “God saw that it was good.” Contrariwise, it is unlucky to commence anything of importance on Monday, as to which day nothing at all is said.[862] Where such conceptions are rife, they readily lend themselves to divination and astrology, and under the fostering care of practitioners of magical arts may develop into elaborate augural codes.

The observation of natural phenomena sometimes accounts for the unlucky character ascribed to particular occasions. We have already noted many superstitious observances connected with the phases of the moon, her monthly disappearance from the heavens, and her occasional eclipse by the earth. A further illustration of the same subject is found in the astrological doctrine of the moon stations. The old Babylonian astronomers, one of whose duties it was to make very careful observations of the moon, noticed that at each lunation she appears to pass by the same star-groups. It was natural, therefore, to associate the moon with the conspicuous stars and constellations in the vicinity of the moon’s path. The names which they received were in time extended to the lunar days themselves; and this apparent connection between the two became the principal basis of astrological forecasts for each day of the sidereal month.[863] The fact is well known that Babylonian astrology and astronomy—for the two were scarcely distinguishable in the earlier period—exerted great influence on the neighbouring peoples of Asia; and hence it has been generally assumed that the lunar mansions, reckoned at twenty-seven or twenty-eight in number, which we find among the Hindus and Chinese, and the augural calendars connected therewith, were derived ultimately from Babylonia.[864] In modern India the _nakshatra_, as they are called, “are consulted at births, marriages, and on all occasions of family rejoicing, distress, or calamity. No one undertakes a journey or any important matter except on days which the aspect of the _nakshatra_ renders lucky and auspicious.”[865] Among the Persians and Arabs the lunar stations have long been employed for astrological purposes.[866] The Arabs carried them to Madagascar, where they gave rise to an elaborate distinction of days lucky and unlucky. Some days were considered absolutely bad; others were absolutely good; others were indifferent. Again, some days were not regarded as good in general, though still good enough for special purposes; one being excellent for a house-warming, another for marking out the ground for a new town, and still another was lucky to be born on, but bad for business. Some days had a special peculiarity of their own, for instance, children born on a certain day usually became dumb. The character of a day, according to the Malagasy astrologers, depended, in short, on what one of the twenty-eight lunar stations it represented.[867]

The conception of unluckiness may be deduced _a priori_ from the assumed critical nature of certain periods, such as epagomenal months and days. The thirteenth month, which many peoples employing lunar calculations find it necessary to intercalate at more or less regular intervals, is sometimes regarded as unlucky.[868] Again, the eleven or twelve days by which the solar year exceeds the lunar year assumed among various Indo-European peoples a portentous and often unfavourable significance.[869] The celebration of the Twelve Nights, in the sense of the Twelve Nights and Days, as a festival before or after the winter solstice, has been assigned to the Aryans of the Vedic age in India on the strength of certain passages in the _Rig-Veda_, where the three Ribhus, generally regarded as the personified seasonal deities who divided up the year, are described as sleeping during these days “in the house of the sun.”[870] The prophetic character of the Twelve Days appears to be indicated by their characterization in various Brahmanical writings as an “image of the coming year.”[871] Some eminent scholars have thought that the Twelve Days represent an ancient method of adjusting the lunar year to the solar year, as practised by the early Aryans before the custom arose of inserting a thirteenth month, to which reference is also made in the _Rig-Veda_.[872] This opinion, though not free from difficulties, is strongly supported by numerous parallels to the Indian evidence found in European folklore of the Twelve Days.[873]

Throughout Europe from east to west the Twelve Days, usually reckoned from Christmas to Epiphany, are prolific in popular superstitions and customs. At this time the souls of the dead, sometimes under animal form, return to the earth and revisit the living; witches and demons swarm in the mischief-laden air; werewolves roam about, and the Wild Huntsman rides in the heavens. Most of the ceremonies performed during the Twelve Days have a distinctly pagan cast, such as the constant fire on the domestic hearth, the village bonfires, and the lighted candles; while others, such as the sprinkling of the houses with holy water and the marking of the cross on the doors, have only a thin veneer of Christianity. To a certain extent the Twelve Days thus form the modern European representative of those seasons devoted to the expulsion of ghosts and evil spirits which are observed by peoples of the lower culture.[874] A further resemblance exists in the distinctly unlucky character often assigned to the Twelve Days. In Macedonia no marriages are solemnized during their continuance.[875] In various parts of Germany they are kept as rest days, when the most important household occupations and even those on the farm are omitted. The housewife must not spin, weave lace, or engage in her usual tasks of washing and baking; and the farmer must not thresh grain. Certain foods, especially peas and other legumes, are carefully avoided; and no meat is eaten. It is not wise to lend anything out of the house or to remove refuse and sweepings. One ought not to be short of anything at this time, else one will be short of everything during the ensuing year. Certain animals, particularly associated with witches, should not be called by their right names; hence, you must refer to the fox as “Mr. Long-tail,” and to the mouse as “Floor-runner.” During these fateful days perfect quiet is essential: no table must be pushed about and no doors slammed, otherwise the house will be struck by lightning. In this period dreams and other prognostics are most to be relied on and are most carefully investigated. Everywhere in Germany it is believed that the weather of the Twelve Days determines what will be experienced during the following twelve months, so that they form, in effect, a meteorological calendar for the new year.[876] This last superstition, however, is not confined to Germany, being met, for instance, in modern Brittany. In most parts of that country the Twelve Days, here reckoned from the first of January, are popularly termed _gour-deziou_, “male days,” an expression which must be understood as meaning supplementary or additional days.[877] A superstitious avoidance of certain kinds of work during the Twelve Days may still be found in remote districts of the British Isles. In Shropshire horses are not set to the plough at this time and no spinning is done.[878] In Aberdeenshire people believe that all work ought, if possible, to be finished before Christmas Day. Between this time and New Year’s Eve no bread is baked and no clothes are washed, and the spinning-wheel must be carried from one side of the house to the other.[879] The Twelve Days over and above the year were called in Wales “days of days” (_dyddian dyddon_). “They are free days, and let any one come from any place he may, he will be free, and exposed to no weapon or stroke, since there can be no court and law of country on those days.”[880]

The solar year, superseding the lunar year of three hundred and fifty-four days, seems to have been generally assumed in the first instance at the round number of three hundred and sixty days, the earth’s periodical course around the sun being taken as a multiple of the moon’s course around the earth. In ancient Mexico, where a solar calendar came into use, the three hundred and sixty days were divided into eighteen periods, each of twenty days. As their total did not round out the solar year it became necessary to add five days at the end of the year; and these possessed an unfavourable character. They were called _nemontemi_, “the superfluous, supplementary days,” with the secondary significance of “the useless days,” as being consecrated to no deity and employed for no civic business. That they were considered sinister and unlucky is evident from the abstinence that characterized them. Nothing of any importance was done on the _nemontemi_. The house was not swept, no legal case was tried, and any person so unfortunate as to be born on one of these days was destined to a poor and miserable life. At the same time, the _nemontemi_ possessed a prophetic power for the whole year. “They were careful,” says Father Sahagun, “during these fatal days not to fall asleep during the day, not to quarrel together, not to trip or to fall, because they said that if any of these things befell them, they would continue to befall them thence forevermore.”[881] Among the Mayas of Yucatan the same abstinence prevailed on the five _xma kaba kin_, the “days without names.” On these days “men left the house as seldom as possible, did not wash or comb themselves, and took special care not to undertake any menial or difficult task, doubtless because they lived in the conviction that they would be forced to keep on doing it through the whole ensuing year. The Mexicans were more passive in regard to these days, inasmuch as they merely took care to avoid conjuring up mischief for the coming year, while the Mayas did things more thoroughly. During these days, so portentous for the entire year, they banished the evil which might threaten them. They prepared a clay image of the demon of evil, Uuayayab, that is, _u-uayab-haab_ (‘by whom the year is poisoned’), confronted it with the deity who had supreme power during the year in question, and then carried it out of the village in the direction of that cardinal point to which the new year belonged.”[882]

It is an impressive testimony to the essential unity of primitive culture that in a far distant quarter of the globe an almost identical superstition existed. The Egyptian solar calendar, like the Mexican, was based on a year of three hundred and sixty days, but in Egypt these were grouped into twelve equal months of thirty days each, leaving five supplementary days to be added at the end of the twelfth month—“the five days over and above the year” (_haru duaït hiru ronpit_), as they were styled.[883] Their great antiquity is indicated by another designation, “little month,” applied to them; and, in fact, a notice of the epagomenal days occurs in the _Pyramid Texts_ belonging to the Sixth Dynasty, where they are referred to as the “five additional days” on which the gods were born.[884] Later monumental records show that the deities associated respectively with these days were the five members of the Osirian cycle, Osiris, Horus, Set, Isis, and Nephthys.[885] The evidence of the _Leiden Papyrus_, setting forth the ceremonies requisite for epagomenal days, indicates that they enjoyed exceptional importance because of their position at the end of the year. As religious festivals they were consecrated to the dead. Furthermore, they bore a distinctly ominous or unlucky character, and many were the prayers and magical formulas to be recited by the pious worshipper in order to secure divine protection against the malefic influences supposed to characterize them. To positive rites of prayer and sacrifice the worshipper must add cessation of all activity: “during the five days at the end of the year do no work; abstain from everything”—so runs the priestly text.[886] These precautions taken, he might look forward to a happy New Year.

The conquest of Egypt in the sixth century B.C. by the Achæmenian kings seems to have introduced a knowledge of the excellencies of the Egyptian solar reckoning to the Persians. Their five epagomenal days were called the Gāthā-days, each being sacred to one of the five great divisions of the _Gāthās_, or Zoroastrian hymns. A Persian calendar of late date (1687 A.D.) gives the first day as lucky, and the third as unlucky.[887] It is significant that among the Persians, as in ancient Egypt, the epagomenal days particularly belonged to the dead, to whom sacrifices were regularly offered at this time, as well as during the first five days of the new year.[888] The Armenians also had their five supplementary days—_aweleach_—intercalated after the twelfth month, an arrangement doubtless borrowed from the Persians, but these days do not appear to have been marked by any special observances.[889] The latest attempt to introduce the use of epagomenal days dates from the time of the French Revolution. In their desire to abolish a chronological system bound up with the Christian religion the bold innovators of the National Convention set aside in 1793 the Gregorian calendar, establishing a Republican calendar in which the seven-day week was replaced by the decade and the year was divided into twelve months of thirty days each, according to the old Egyptian arrangement. Five intercalary days, popularly called _sansculottides_, came at the end of the year (six days at the end of every fourth year); they were dedicated to Virtue, Genius, Labour, Opinion, and Reward; and were observed as holidays. But this calendar, which John Quincy Adams described as an “incongruous composition of profound learning and superficial frivolity, of irreligion and morality, of delicate imagination and coarse vulgarity,” had a short life. In 1802 the week of seven days returned into general use, and three years later an edict of Napoleon ordered the restoration of the Gregorian calendar.[890] In our own time, however, serious proposals have been made looking toward the reformation of the present awkward calendar, and among them is the suggestion that we adopt the ancient Egyptian system of months and epagomenal days.

It has been repeatedly noticed in the preceding pages that oftentimes no clear line of demarcation can be drawn between days _tabu_ and days considered “unlucky.” Both may involve ideas of contagion, the sanctity or pollution attaching to the one being conceived as scarcely less transmissible than the vaguer “unluckiness” which belongs to certain periods and affects everything done during their continuance. How some of the so-called unlucky days, still lingering in contemporary civilization, have descended from the holy days of antiquity is aptly illustrated by the superstitions relating to the certain days of March and of August, as observed at the present time in southeastern Europe. In Macedonia the peasants during the first three days and the last three days of these two months do not plant; they cut no tree or vine, for fear lest it should wither; they do not bathe in the sea, or their bodies would swell; and they even refrain from washing clothes.[891] In various parts of Greece and the Ægean it is considered necessary to abstain from particular kinds of work on certain days of August, and occasionally of March. During the first five days of August the people of Epirus do not wash clothes or go into the fields to work. In Crete the period is longer, for here on the first six and last six days of August clothes are not washed and grapes are not gathered.[892] In Cos on the first three days of August the women do no work (for it would not prosper) and wash no clothes (for these would soon wear out). The eleven days which follow are supposed to foreshadow the weather during the succeeding eleven months: as the fourth day is, so will September be; the fifth day prognosticates the weather for October, and so on. The fifteenth of August is celebrated as the Feast of the Assumption, closing a fortnight’s strict fast.[893] The Cypriotes observe the first three or six days of August as times when no trees are cut or peeled to obtain resin, when the use of water for washing clothes or the body is forbidden, and when no one travels by water. The severity of the regulations has led to the days being called the “evil days of August.”[894] All these taboos thus show much similarity, relating in particular to abstention from work which has to do with water or with vines and trees. From this fact it becomes a plausible inference that the unlucky days were originally sacred to the tree-nymphs and water-nymphs, whose festivals were celebrated in pagan antiquity. At the present time the days are associated with the _drymais_, mysterious spirits supposed to be abroad on them, and probably to be identified with the dryads (δρύαδες) of classic mythology.

The likeness between tabooed days as periods of abstinence and some unlucky days may be further illustrated by much ethnographic evidence drawn from different cultural areas. The Maori, we are told, endeavour to determine by divination whether the day set for a journey is favourable or unfavourable. The fisherman is hopeless of making a catch on an unfavourable day. At such a time “no dress will be commenced, no seine cast, no fish-hook baited, no ground turned up, seed sown, distant visit made, flax cut or dressed, timber cut, canoe formed, or even food partaken of.”[895] The Batta of Sumatra possess elaborate calendars of days favourable, unfavourable, and of a doubtful character; and these are regularly consulted by the Batta magician in order that his clients may know when to commence any important undertaking, such as sowing and harvesting, house-building, erection of a new village, removal to another village, preparation of sacrifices at birth, name-giving, burial, betrothal, and marriage, and all other great occasions. A day may be wholly unlucky for one thing, but not for another; for instance, a day which could not safely be used for the celebration of a sacrifice might still be used for the inauguration of agricultural labour. On the other hand, there are certain days, indicated in the calendars, when all activity ceases, except the entertainment of relatives and indispensable harvest work. If a man should meet with misfortune on one of these fatal days, a sacrifice must be offered to the supernatural power supposed to be responsible for the visitation. The Batta calendar in its existing form is derived from India, but the people seem formerly to have possessed their own rude calendar, which was used to determine the lucky and unlucky days in a lunar month. Even at the present time the calendar is not employed for the fixation of dates in the European sense, but only in the service of popular superstition.[896]

The Mohammedan Malays of the Malay Peninsula possess a number of divinatory calendars, one specifying seven unlucky days in every month, a second, twelve other most inauspicious days in every year, while a third gives all the days of the year classified under the heads lucky, somewhat unlucky, most unlucky, and neutral.[897] Chinese popular calendars set forth a similar classification of the days of the month as very lucky, neither lucky nor unlucky, unlucky, and very unlucky.[898] Furthermore, the first, fifth, and ninth months are considered unfavourable by the Chinese, who will not marry or change houses during these months.[899] In Korea the fifth, fifteenth, and twenty-fifth days of each month are called “broken days.” At such times the people avoid any new undertakings.[900] The old Japanese are said to have held five yearly festivals or holidays, “purposely laid on those days, which, by reason of their imparity, are judged to be the most unfortunate.” These were New Year’s Day, the third day of the third month, the fifth of the fifth month, the seventh of the seventh month, and the ninth of the ninth month.[901] In modern Japan the cheap popular calendars, circulating among the lower classes, contain indications for every day of a cycle of six days. Of these, the first is described as good during the forenoon for urgent business, such as lawsuits and petitions, but not good after midday. The second is good in the forenoon and in the evening, but not in the afternoon. The first half of the third day is bad, and no urgent business should be undertaken at such a time; the afternoon, however, is lucky. Nothing done on the fourth day will prosper. The fifth day is very lucky for anything, especially removals or journeys. With the exception of the noon-tide hour the whole of the sixth day is unlucky. This cycle used in divination flourishes side by side with the week of seven days.[902]

The Tibetans are great astrologers. In every monastery there is at least one divining lama whose business it is to determine propitious and unpropitious times. Calendars exist for all the days of the month, some being described as “good,” others as “middling,” others as “bad,” while one is referred to as “not very good,” and still another as “the worst.” Among the causes of the luck or unluck attaching to certain days the Tibetans are inclined to lay stress on the periodical migrations of the spirits inhabiting the regions above the earth. It seems that the two kinds of spirits, good and evil, shift their abodes, to some extent every day and also contemporaneously with the phases of the moon, the commencement of a new season, and so on. Their migrations are performed with unequal velocity; hence, the combination of spirits varies for every day. If the good spirits are more numerous than the evil spirits on a particular day, the time will be favourable for any undertaking; and _vice versa_. This belief, we are told, offers a wide field of intrigue to the lamas, who alone are able to decide what have been the actual movements of the spirits.[903]

The Toda, who dwell in permanent villages on the plateaus of the Nilgiri Hills in southeastern India, have a remarkable system of rest days deserving to be described at some length. The social organization of this interesting people consists of two endogamous divisions, called Teivaliol and Tartharol. Each of these primary sections is composed of intermarrying clans, and each clan possesses a group of villages in common. At the present time Toda interests, both economic and religious, centre about their buffaloes. The daily life of the Toda men is largely devoted to the care of these animals and to labour in the dairies. The buffalo is a sacred animal; the dairy itself is almost a temple; and the dairyman is only one remove from a priest. Toda religious rites seem to be, in fact, little more than the arrangements which a pastoral and communistic people have made for the provision and care of an article of food. According to Dr. Rivers, whose careful studies are a model of anthropological investigation, nearly every Toda ceremony has its appointed day or days. The choice of these “is often dependent on another Toda institution, the sacred day, either of the village or of the dairy. Every clan has certain days of the week on which people are restricted from following many of their ordinary occupations, although they are not the occasions of any special ceremonies. These sacred days are the _madnol_, or village day, and the _palinol_, or dairy day.”[904]

Each Toda village has its _madnol_, but, in general, where there are several villages of the same clan, the _madnol_ is the same for the whole clan. There are at least eight prohibitions characterizing the observance of this sacred day. Feasts may not be given at such a time, funeral ceremonies may not be performed, people may not bathe or cut their nails, and men may not shave. Clothes are not to be washed, the house is not to be cleansed, and, though the ordinary meals may be prepared, rice and milk must not be cooked together. Other regulations forbid the dairyman to leave the village, the buffaloes to be taken from one place to another, or the people to migrate from one village to another.[905] Though not all work is prohibited, the regulations are extensive enough to affect most of the customary occupations. Among the Teivaliol, one of the two endogamous divisions of the Toda people, the _madnol_ is the only sacred day of the week. With the other division, called Tartharol, there is also a dairy day, or _palinol_, the regulations for which have much the same character as for the _madnol_.

Toda ingenuity has devised recognized methods of evading the rules for the holy days, and so of avoiding the inconvenience which might otherwise be entailed on the people. The rule that nothing may be taken from the village on the _madnol_ would prevent any purchases from outsiders being made on the holy day, since money would have to pass out of the village in payment. The Toda avoid this awkward consequence by the simple device of taking money beyond the village limits on the day before the _madnol_ and burying it in some spot where it can be found when wanted. The rule forbidding Toda women to leave the village on the _madnol_ is evaded in a curious fashion. A woman will depart from the settlement before daybreak, will remain outside till the sun is up, and will then return to her home, for breakfast and the performance of any necessary work. During this time she is regarded as ceremonially absent from the village, hence her actual departure later in the day for another village is not considered to be a desecration of the _madnol_. With these possibilities of evasion open to the pious Toda, it follows that the regulations are seldom broken, in the letter if not in the spirit. When a breach of them does occur, the culprit may be obliged to perform a propitiatory sacrifice similar to that which follows the commission of various other ceremonial sins. “It seemed quite clear, however, that this only happened if some misfortune should befall the offender, his family, or his buffaloes. It would seem that a man might habitually and notoriously desecrate the _madnol_, but no steps would be taken by himself or the community so long as things went well with the man. If he should become ill or if his buffaloes should suffer in any way, he would consult the diviners and they would then certainly find that his misfortunes were due to his infringement of the laws connected with the sacred days.”[906]

There is much variety in the days observed as the _madnol_ or the _palinol_ of the different villages and clans. The most frequent days appear to be Wednesday and Friday, which are sacred in six clans. Sunday is sacred in five clans, Monday and Tuesday in three, Thursday in two. In no clan does Saturday appear to be kept as a holy day.[907]

The origin of these sacred days among the Toda is very obscure. Dr. Rivers first suggests the possibility of the institution of _madnol_ and _palinol_ having grown out of the belief in unlucky days. The code of rules prescribing what might and what might not be done would then be only an elaboration of the common superstition which restricts activity at such unlucky periods. But there are several difficulties in the way of this view. It is extremely doubtful whether the Toda has any such belief in days lucky and unlucky,[908] and if he has, the idea is probably a recent importation from the Hindus, among whom the superstition is very prevalent. Again, the distinction between _madnol_ and _palinol_ is one which cannot be satisfactorily explained by such a hypothesis. Finally, the different clans of the Toda have different sacred days, whereas one would expect lucky and unlucky days to be the same for the entire community. This seems especially reasonable when it is considered that the sacred days, by restricting intercourse between the different clans, produce much inconvenience, which, of course, is increased by the fact that the different clans have different _madnol_. Whatever be the origin of these Toda rules, there is, writes Dr. Rivers, “little doubt that when at the present time a given act is done or not done on a given day, the action is not based on a belief in lucky or unlucky days, but, as nearly always among the Toda, on custom prescribing that the act shall or shall not be done on that day.”[909]

The question may be raised whether the resemblance of the Toda _madnol_ to the Hebrew Sabbath is not accounted for by supposing the former institution to have been founded on ideas borrowed from Christians or Jews. If this has been the case, it is certain that the borrowing took place very long ago. In studying the origin and history of the Toda we have no record that reaches back more than three centuries. From various close resemblances between the Toda customs and those of the people of Malabar, Dr. Rivers thinks it probable that the Toda at one time lived in Malabar, migrating thence to the Nilgiri Hills. Both Christians and Jews were well established in Malabar more than a thousand years ago. If the Toda left Malabar before these settlements of foreigners were made, then Jewish or Christian influences can be excluded; if the migration took place subsequently, then they may have contributed to the development of the Toda institution.[910]

In spite of these considerations, Dr. Rivers is inclined to consider the Toda _madnol_ as substantially a native institution, which may help to explain the origin of the Hebrew Sabbath. “In a busier community than that of the Toda, the existence of different _madnol_ for different clans of the community would soon become a serious obstacle to carrying on the business of life, and such a community would probably agree that all clans should have the same holy day. At present the _madnol_ is undoubtedly more sacred than the other sacred days, and if the latter were then to be neglected, we should have a community in which various activities were prohibited on one day of the week, and the institution so arising would differ very little from the Hebrew Sabbath. It is possible that the Toda show in an early stage the institution of a Sabbath in which the whole community has not yet settled on a single and joint holy day.”[911] The fact that the Toda employ the seven-day week, which must be entirely a borrowed institution with them, suggests, however, that the prohibitions attaching to certain days of that week were ultimately derived from foreign sources.[912]

Another curious instance of communal rest days is found among the Siah Posh Kafirs, a primitive Aryan people dwelling in the northeastern part of Afghanistan, between Chitral and the Hindu-Kush. They seem formerly to have occupied a more extended area about the headwaters of the Indus. The conversion of the surrounding tribes, first to Buddhism and later to Mohammedanism, has further served to isolate them. With the Afghans on the west their enmity is deadly and unceasing, but their relations with their eastern neighbours admit of friendly intercourse. It is on this side, therefore, that we must look for the introduction into Kafiristan of Indian cultural elements, among which is the seven-day week.[913] On certain weekdays the Siah Posh Kafirs rest from work. Young and old gather in large buildings erected in the centre of the villages and here they dance all night, to the music of flutes and trumpets, and sing songs in honour of the gods.[914] According to a later and fuller account, the Kafir rest days are called _agar_; in some districts they occur every Thursday, in other districts, every Saturday, but only during the months from April to September, when field work is in progress. The _agar_ appear to be rigorously observed by the male inhabitants of a village, but the women, who stop their field-work on these days, do not scruple to engage in other coolie labour during their continuance. “I failed,” writes our authority, “to discover anything concerning the origin of these _agar_. Their observance may have become a national custom, the origin of which is as difficult to determine as the Sabbaths of other ancient peoples. As the Kám people were averse to starting on a journey on the _agar_ days, and as all the women left their field-work altogether on those occasions, it is possible that the _agar_ was originally considered an unlucky day.”[915]

Perhaps no people have subjected themselves to more irksome restrictions on unlucky days than the natives of Madagascar. In this island systems of taboo are widespread and elaborate, even at the present time. The term _fady_ (or _tabu_), used for all objects and persons tabooed, is likewise applied by the Malagasy to unfavourable days and months, the quality of such periods as dangerous or unlucky being considered transmissible to beings and actions.[916] By the Hova, a people of remote, perhaps prehistoric, Malay origin, now occupying the central tableland of Madagascar, only twelve days in the month were regarded as lucky. The first days of some months possessed a most disastrous character, and children born on them were usually put to death. The same cruel practice was found among other tribes, such as the Bara and Tanala, leading, in the latter case, to the destruction of at least one-fourth of all the infants born.[917] The Tanala consider one of the months, called _faosa_, extremely unlucky. “No one works in that month, no one changes his place of abode or goes about. If any one happens to be in the fields when the month comes in, there he remains.”[918] The Sihanaka keep Tuesday as an unlucky day on which no work is allowed in the fields. Each Sihanaka family, in addition, inherits a special unlucky day in each week, when it is not permissible to go outside the house.[919] The Sakalava likewise abstain from all business and remain strictly in seclusion on their unlucky days, which belong both to families and to individuals.[920] Among the Betsimisaraka each person has his unlucky day when he does not work; in fact, he can do nothing at this time except eat, drink, sleep, and dress his hair. Since the introduction of Christianity the day kept in this strict fashion is Sunday.[921]

These accounts of lucky and unlucky days observed by half-civilized peoples at the present time throw light on the references to the same superstition found in the records of archaic civilizations. For Egypt we have the evidence of several ancient calendars preserved in papyrus manuscripts. The first of these dates from the Twelfth Dynasty (about 2000 B.C.) and includes all the days of the month, eighteen being defined as “good,” nine as “bad,” and three (the sixteenth, twenty-second, and twenty-third), as “half-good” and “half-bad.” The primitive character of this calendar is indicated by the fact that the same prognostics are attached to the same days of the month throughout the year. The second calendar, dating from about 1000 B.C., is more complicated, since the prognostics of the several days are unlike in the different months, while each day is itself divided into three parts, lucky, unlucky, and neutral. Neither calendar contains mention of the five epagomenal days.[922]

The third and best-known of these Egyptian calendars is the _Papyrus Sallier IV_, which in its present form belongs to about 1200 B.C. but is based on much earlier documents.[923] Parts of the manuscript at the beginning and end have been lost, so that it now contains prognostics for only two hundred and thirty-five days of the year. This interesting production of ancient though misdirected learning divides the hours between the rising and the setting of the sun into three periods, each of which is ruled by its particular influence. Some days were good throughout the three periods, some were wholly bad, others were critical—_dubium sed in malum vergens_—while others again presented combinations of these three characteristics. The following are typical regulations, arranged according to the order of the Egyptian months.[924] 22 Thoth: eat no fish and light no oil lamp. 23 Thoth: put no incense on the fire; kill no animals, domestic or wild; eat neither a goose nor a goat. A child born on this day will amount to nothing. 26 Thoth: do nothing on this day. 4 Paophi: do not go out of the house. 5 Paophi: do not go out of the house; do not have intercourse with a woman. 22 Paophi: do not wash and do not approach a stream. 19 Athyr: light no fire. 6 Mechir: do no work. 13 Pharmuthi: do not go anywhere. In the calendar as a whole the most frequent injunctions relate to quitting the house, travelling, sailing, and undertaking any kind of work. Next in number are the prohibitions of loud talking, singing, and sexual intercourse. There are also prohibitions of drinking, bathing, and killing or eating certain animals, besides others directed against the use of fire and lights. It is clear that in this curious treatise we have a systematization of popular taboos relating to the lucky or unlucky character of certain days. The fact that it was used as a boy’s schoolbook indicates how priestly influence had erected into a pseudo-science the uncouth and childish superstitions of the multitude. The calendar itself presents evidence that the priests had begun to rationalize the taboos, for the prohibitions are often accompanied by a summary of the motives which justified them, usually legendary episodes of the gods. For instance, the regulation for the twenty-sixth of Thoth—“do absolutely nothing”—is explained by a reference to the terrific combat between Horus and his uncle Set, which occurred on this ill-omened day.[925]

The Babylonian augural calendar for the intercalated month of Elul and for Markheshwan is not the only example of omen literature to be found in the cuneiform records. We possess a document, preserved in great part, which includes every day in the year, either specifying its nature as favourable or unfavourable or adding other indications with regard to its character. A note like “hostility,” appended to the twenty-first day of the second month, is a warning that the gods are out of humour on that day; the twenty-third day, described as “heart not good,” is explained by the contrast “heart glad” on the following day. Not content with a simple distinction of favourableness and unfavourableness, the calendar also deals with days “wholly favourable” and “half favourable.” Still other days are noted as those portending “distress,” “trouble,” “tears,” “injury,” “darkness,” “moon obscured,” and the like. The precautions and prohibitions set forth for unlucky days include, among many others, the familiar taboos of eating specified foods, such as swine’s flesh, beef, dates, and fish, sexual intercourse, buying and selling, wearing bright garments, travelling, holding law courts, and so on. The calendar contains a number of references to the king and may, very probably, have served the priests in their instructions to the monarch. As Professor Jastrow remarks, the belief in lucky and unlucky days has a distinctly popular flavour, making it probable that the priests embodied in their lists many of the notions that arose among the people, and gave to these an official sanction.[926]

The Greeks of Hesiod’s time possessed an elaborate calendar of lucky and unlucky days.[927] “Sometimes a day is a stepmother, sometimes a mother,” Hesiod remarks pithily. What ancient regulations for the observance of tabooed periods are embodied in the calendar is problematical. Many of the prohibitions with which the first part of the poem concludes are, however, thoroughly primitive taboos.[928] Hesiod does not mention any days when labour is to be entirely abandoned. We may assume, perhaps, that at the period when the Hesiodic poems were composed the rationalizing temper of the Greeks had gotten somewhat the better of their superstitious fears. In the Hesiodic list, as in the Egyptian and Babylonian calendars, the notion appears that not only whole days but even parts of days have an individual character, working for good or evil. The middle ninth (the nineteenth) is said to be “a better day toward afternoon.” The “fourth which followeth the twentieth of the month is the best at dawn, but it is worse toward afternoon.” Hesiod does not distinguish the months as lucky or unlucky, and the days which possess either of these attributes are the same for every month. He gives no explanation for their luckiness or unluckiness, though traces of a rationalizing process are perhaps observable in the directions regarding the “fifths” (presumably the fifth, fifteenth, and twenty-fifth days), which are specially unlucky “because on the fifth men say the Erinyes attended the birth of Oath (Horkos), whom Strife bare to punish perjurers.” The seventh again is lucky, “for on that day Leto bare Apollo of the Golden Sword.”[929] The Hesiodic injunctions did not cease to be observed in the later classical epoch and exercised great influence on civil and political life. The superstitions relating to unlucky days only gained a firmer foothold, under the influence of Babylonian and Egyptian doctrines, in passing from Greece to Rome and from Rome to western Europe.[930]

During the Middle Ages perhaps the most widespread observance of unlucky days had to do with those which went under the significant name of _dies Ægyptiaci_. The prohibitions marking them—not to build a house, not to buy or sell, not to cut hair, beard, and nails, and so on—possessed, however, no character specifically Egyptian. The mediæval belief was that these days received their designation because on one of them the plagues had been sent to devastate the land of Egypt, and on another Pharaoh and his host had been swallowed up in the Red Sea. As early as the fourth century A.D. Christian writers refer to “Egyptian days” as times feared and avoided by both pagans and converts to Christianity.[931] About this period the superstition gained admittance to the state calendars. In the _fasti Philocali_ (354 A.D.), twenty-five _dies Ægyptiaci_ are reckoned, two in each month except January, which contains three.[932] A mediæval French manuscript, dating from the reign of St. Louis, includes twenty-four such days, but another manuscript, of the fourteenth century, enumerates thirty days of the year as very dangerous, when it is necessary to abstain from buying and selling, building, and planting. Still another manuscript, of the fifteenth century, reckons thirty-one wholly evil days, while certain hours of other days also possess dangerous qualities.[933] In the seventeenth century J. B. Thiers, the learned curé of Vibraie, notices the “Egyptian days” in his extensive list of the superstitious beliefs regarding certain times and seasons, prevalent in his age but condemned by theologians (St. Thomas Aquinas), popes (Nicholas I), and Church synods and councils.[934] Anglo-Saxon calendars mention about twenty-four “Egyptian days” in the year, when it is dangerous, if not fatal, to begin an enterprise or to travel. A manuscript calendar, dating from the reign of Henry VI, gives a list of thirty-two such days. After the Reformation the old unlucky days appear to have abated much of their malevolence, and to have left behind them only a general superstition against fishermen starting out to fish, or seamen to take a voyage, or landsmen a journey, or domestic servants to enter a new place—on a Friday.[935]