"Spectator" Competitions

RULES AND CONDITIONS Entries must be typed or very clearly written on one side of the paper only. The name and address, or pseudonym, of the competitor must be on each entry and not on a separate sheet. When a word limit is set words must be counted and the number given. No entries Gan be returned. Prizes may be divided at the discretion of the judge, or withheld if no entry reaches the required standard. The judge reserves the right to print or quote from any entry. The judge's decision is final, and no correspondence can be entered into on the subject of the award. Entries must be addressed to :—The Editor, the Spectator. 09 Gower Street,

London, W.C. 1, and be marked on the envelope Competition No. (—).

Competition No. 48 (SET BY " DUGLI.") CERTAIN buildings, events and institutions in England have earned the right to familiar names ; for example, Big Ben, the Old Vic, the " Proms." A prize of £2 2s. is offered for a list of suggested familiar names for any six of the following : The Chelsea Flower Show, the Albert Hall, the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the B.B.C. News Bulletin, Piccadilly Circus, the Royal Tournament at Olympia, Somerset House, the Automobile Association, the Wimbledon Tennis Tournament, the British Museum.

Entries must bo received not later than Monday, March 14th, 1932. The result of this competition will appear in our issue of March 26th, 1932.

Competition No. 49 (SET BY "CARD.") A PRIZE of two guineas is offered for the best list of names suitable for any five of the following ten

imaginary persons.

(1) A rabbit fancier living in Cavendish Square.

(2) A doctor practising in South Kensington-Station.

(3) A Cabinet Minister afflicted with St. Vitus Dance.

(4) A butcher suffering from religious mania.

(5) A croquet-playing pugilist. (6) A prohibitionist married to a whisky magnate's daughter.

(7) A soothsayer with a stammer.

(8) A peer who has lost his memory.

(9) A bearded woman in love.

(10) A man who does mateli.tricks.

Entries must be received not later than Monday, March 21st, 1932. The result of this competition will appear in our issue of April 2nd. 1932. The result of Competition No. 47 will appear in our next issue.

Limerick Competition No. 19 A PRIZE of £1 ls. is offered each week for a new and original English Limerick verse on some subject dealt with in the current number of the Spectator. The nineteenth of these competitions closes on Monday, March 21st, 1932. Entries should be marked " Limerick No. 19."

The result of the seventeenth of these competitions will be announced in our next issue.

[It is requested that, to facilitate the work of the judges, entries should, when possible, be submitted on postcards.] Result of Limerick Competition No. 16

TICE most popular subjects for Limericks this week were Waterloo Bridge Doomed, In a Turkish Hospital (F. Yeats- Brown), A Word on Family Life (Rose Macaulay), The Habitual Criminal (Gerald Heard), Lewis Carroll (E. E. Kellett), and Love among the Snows (J. B. Naismith). The entries of Col. H. L. Stafford, H. Forsythe, Lady Muriel Willoughby, " Monk," and C. G. Hanrott are commended ; and the prize is awarded to R. E. B. Clift, Hillside, Wellinfrton; Shropshire.

THE WINNING ENTRY.

Lzwis Csracorm (page 255).

One Dodgson, of fame mathematical, Cohld, as Carroll, perform aerobatics!

Contortions with phrases, And leave us in mazes, Making logic itself problematical. R. E. B. CrArr.

Commended:

• isez.san's DECISION (page 238). (With apologies—them being no word in English to rhyme with the

hibernicized pronunciation of Do Valera.)

Tlyaun Espagnol De Valera,

Irlandais par choice et tree ehaleureux, Qui vent buffer le Treaty,"

Fake Royaume--dieuni.

Quo feron.s-nobs done de to raalheureux f

F. A. GODDARD.

Report of Competition No. 46

(REPORT AND AWARD BY "Ducitr.")

A ricizE of £2 2s. was offered for an essay in not more than 250 words on Private Superstitions. This has been a popular competition, but it has found competitors in serious mood. There has been a great deal in these essays about propitiating unseen powers and mass stupidity and the subconscious mind and atavistic self- protection, and those people who would own to having private superstitions were quick to defend themselves by pointing out the similar weaknesses of Doctor Johnson or Napoleon or Julius Caesar.

" Heirloom " was commendably simple and sure that good luck and bad has, for him, followed piebald horses, dreams and itching palms. W. Cockburn Duncan dares not " refuse to take a ticket in a sweepstake." Beaver's private superstition is a golfing one. The Rev. A. H. Storrs thinks that all " common superstitions were originally private ones."

The following, in addition to those mentioned above, are Highly Commended : Museulus," Tom L. Lamond, " Sirod," Mrs. E. J. Horder, H. A. L. Cockerell, L. A. Wilding, J. J. V. Summers and Mrs. A. R. Morrison.

The prize is awarded to Anne Page, 40 Woodland Gardens, Muswell Hill, N. 10, for personal reminiscences, refreshingly free from philosophy, psychology and other " Loney " words.

THE WINNING ESSAY.

ON PRIVATP. SCPERSITTIONS.

It seems that many people make a private superstition of defying the public ones. I myself always walk under any available ladder with a superior air (and two fingers unobtrusively crossed in my pocket). But at school, I remember, when walking in crocodile, the sight of a white horse was the signal for us to mutter :

" White horse, Cross cross, White horse, Bring me luck ! "

The bad rhyme irritated me into silence in time, but to this day a white horse gives me a sudden sneaking wonder whether some. thing nice is not just round the corner !

Another youthful superstition was the linking of little fingers when two of us spoke together. In silence we wished, and then mentioned the name of a poet. Upon which an onlooker had to remark, "I hope your wish will come true." But there was a sister superstition here Shakespeare wishes don't come true. And from that time the name of the bard has held a sinister mined for me !

My mother had a pair of pearl earrings which she refused to wear because they were unlucky." Rather scornfully amused, I wore them myself. After three or four curious coincidences I passed them on to a relation. The relation has had two years of illness, and has just loot most of her money, but she still wears the earrings. Of course, there is nothing in it ! She was often ill before that, and we are all losing our money nowadays !

ANNE PACE

Highly Commended.:

PRIVATE SUPERSTITIONS.

If no good man, according to Disraeli, tells his religion, then certainly no weak man should be compelled to confess his super- stitions. For there is no one who does not keep these rather curious skeletons in his private cupboard.

Even the great Boyle used to carry about the hair from a murderer's bead as a charm against disease. Yet to the student of life's curiosities and ironies, it must be clear that there arc superstitions and superstitions. There are those which affect a whole people, those which affect a trade or an occupation, and finally those which belong to the individual. Every man must. perforce believe in luck and everyone is occasionally lucky. Curious though it may seem, it is really in his more rational momenta that man produces his private superstitions. He tries to analyse the causes of his success. He remembers that on such an occasion be had worn a green hat or put his socks on inside out and infers not that the incident itself was the cause of the SUCCOOR but that it was a symptom. Like any sound medicine man he argues that to reproduce the symptom is to reproduce the mood which led to success.

Was it not Baudelaire who wrote : "La superstition eat is rieersoir tie goatee lea viritee."

The writer himself has found that if he scores 15 before lunch, he never scores lass than 50 after lunch—sic prandet gloria.

Must:mis.