 | Benjamin Robert Haydon - 1853 - 568 pagine
...singular superstitions ahout this bird were remembered by us all. I repeated to myself the old saw, " one for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, and four for death." I tried to deceive my dear mother by declaring that two were for death and four for mirth, but she... | |
 | Thomas De Quincey - 1854 - 360 pagine
...Devonshire version of the old saying, I am assured by a lady that the form current elsewhere is this : — "One for sorrow; Two for mirth ; Three for a wedding; And four for a birth." And it is clear that the rhyme in the latter reading offers some guarantee for its superior... | |
 | Pishey Thompson - 1856 - 865 pagine
...a hundred, men, money, and pins, Six score's a hundred in all other things." Spoken of magpies:— "ONE for sorrow, two for mirth, Three for a wedding, and four for a death." COLD-HARBOTJK.—-TooNE, in his " Glossary," quotes as follows from an old play, called,... | |
 | Mackenzie Edward C. Walcott - 1859 - 216 pagine
...when the dead are carried out to burial ? or who will not bow low when he meets a single magpie ? " One for sorrow, two for mirth, ' Three for a wedding, and four for a birth." Or who will venture to plant lilies of the valley, when death within a twelvemonth is the... | |
 | Mackenzie Edward Charles Walcott - 1859 - 660 pagine
...when the dead are carried out to burial ? or who will not bow low when he meets a single magpie ? " One for sorrow, two for mirth, Three for a wedding, and four for a birth." Or who will venture to plant lilies of the valley, when death within a twelvemonth is the... | |
 | Peter Paradox (pseud.) - 1860 - 330 pagine
...attendant on meeting these birds, which in the Gaelic are called pioghards. The proverb runs thus : — " One for sorrow, two for mirth, Three for a wedding, and four for a birth. " The spider also, in France, is invested with deeply important consequences, dependent on... | |
 | Chambers's journal - 1862 - 432 pagine
...of a single magpie in the morning was a certam sign of sorrow for the day, according to the proverb, 'One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, and four for a birth,' my curiosity got the better of my prudence, and I peeped through the hedge to see what was... | |
 | 1868 - 758 pagine
...drank, that they might not be wasted, the dregs of all sorts left of the bottles of medicine (trade was the old Devonian name), and picked up the apples...luck ; but the tickings of the death-watch and the howlings of a dog at the door were certain prognostications of evil. She loved to revel in horrors.... | |
 | 1866 - 618 pagine
...common in his youth. The superstition applies only to a single magpie, according to the old nursery legend : — " One for sorrow, Two for mirth, Three for a wedding, And four for a birth." Liverpool. EB HUSBANDS AT THE CHURCH Boon (3rd S. ix. 10, 107.) — In my church, up to the... | |
 | Nicholas Belfield Dennys - 1870 - 188 pagine
...hand, while our old superstition concerning magpies is adverse to the appearance of a single bird — " One for sorrow, Two for mirth, Three for a wedding, And four for a birth," the Chinese consider the solitary visitor an omen of good luck. A duck quacking as one passes... | |
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I tried to deceive my dear mother by declaring that two were for death and four for mirth, but she persisted that four announced death in Devonshire, and, absurd as we felt it to be, we could not shake off the superstition. 
