Friday the 13th and Other Old Wives Tales

Are you superstitious? Does walking under a ladder, seeing a black cat, the number 666, or Friday the 13^th play havoc with your life? Many people are affected by such gibberish, and even though I believe its nonsense, I have to laugh at myself, because if I walk under a ladder (and it only seems to be the ladder thing), I have to wonder in the back of my mind if my day will be turned upside down. It hasn’t happened yet, so why do I even give it a moment’s notice? I suppose since the first man the world has been plagued by old wives tales (Remember, there was a time when the world was flat).

Here’s a good one for you. Pioneer Martha Maria Meacham Burton believed her mother would die if her mom did what during a time when her mother was afflicted with what was called “childbed fever?”

A)     Ate an apple

B)     Sneezed or coughed

C)     Had a bath

D)     Drank water

Yesterday’s answer:

(A)     The revelations of the last dispensation

A letter from Alfred Cordon to Joseph Smith:

   Some of the tools of Satan are doing more in spreading the truth than we are able to do; one in particular, a Mr. Brindley, is publishing a periodical showing the “errors and blasphemies” of “Mormonism;” and in order to do this, he publishes many of the revelations of God given to us, and through this means, the testimony is visiting the mansions of the high and mighty ones-the “reverends, high reverends” and all the noble champions of sectarians receive them as a precious morsel; and they are read with much interest; whereas, if we had sent them, they would have been spurned from their dwellings, and would not have been considered worth reading.

Joseph Smith Jr., History of the Church (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1950), 4:515.