TWO SOMERSET SUPERSTITIONS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR...1 SIR,—I have been interested to read in your columns of " Rabbits " as a lucky ejaculation. Sailors take a very opposite view. Many years ago I was learning to sail a forty-ton yacht off Harwich, and was told by the skipper that three things were considered unlucky on board a sailing ship—whistling, and speaking of girls or rabbits. Indeed, I was so much struck by this odd and incongruous triad that I remember
mentioning them in the course of some joking verses written at the same time
"The first thing that I learnt was that of all obnoxious habits The worst were whistling on a ship, or mentioning girls or rabbits.
Why rabbits are taboo I'll own I'm eager to discover, The other's comprehensible, not easily got over :
For Sailor-Men mistrust our sex, and every Sailor-Man'll Select a b(u)oy for preference, when marking out a channel,"
&c., &c.
Perhaps some of your readers may be able to corroborate, and even to explain, this variant of the "rabbit" superstition.—I Aldeburgh, Suffolk.
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