Superstitions in the novel ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry
Finn’ by Mark Twain
·
Huck kills a spider which is bad
luck
·
The hair-ball tells fortunes
·
Jim
says if you count the things you are going to cook for dinner that would bring
bad luck.
·
Huck touches a skin of rattle snake
and it brings Huck and Jim good and bad luck.
Chapter 1
"Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I
slipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all
shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign
and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes
off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my
breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair to keep witches
away."
Chapter 4
"Jim
had a hairball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth
stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit
inside of it that knowed everything. So I went to him that night..."
Chapter 8
"And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to
cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the
table-cloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a bee-hive, and that man
died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up the next morning, or else
the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die."
Chapter 10
"You
said it was the worst bad luck in the world to touch a snakeskin in my
hands."
"And he said that handling
a snake-skin was such awful bad luck that maybe we hadn't got to the end of it
yet. He said he druther see the new moon over his left shoulder as much as a
thousand times than take up a snake-skin in his hand."
