Superstitions by Mark Twain

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."