159 [Phillips. 
March 16, 1888. | 
PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, 
HELD AT PHILADELPHIA, FOR PROMOTING USERUL KNOWLEDGE, 
VOL. XOX. JuLy To DECEMBER, 1888. No. 128. 
First Contribution to the Folk-lore of Philadelphia and tts Vicinity. 
By Henry Phillips, Jr. 
(Read before the American Philosophical Society, March 16, 1888.) 
The present paper contains only such popular superstitions as have 
come under my notice. To make the subject cover a larger ground, say 
the State of Pennsylvania, or the United States, would be to open the 
door to a liability to error; and more good can be done by efforts 
of individual observers, each taking his own surrounding district, than 
by grasping after too great a number of items of folk-lore, perhaps too 
readily accepted as universal, while really only local. To the local searcher, 
therefore, must the bulk of such work be confided, knowing that from 
the mass of entirely reliable individual collections, the general principles 
that underlie them all will be ultimately evolved from correct data. All 
of these are at least a half century old, unless where otherwise stated. 
Brrts, DEATH AND MARRIAGE. 
1.— Who changes her name and not the letter, 
Marries for worse and not for better. 
2.—Rice is thrown over a bride so that some of it falls in her bosom 
(a custom that has originated in the past twenty years). 
3.—An old shoe is thrown after a departing couple after marriage. 
4,—When one shivers some one is walking over their grave. 
kK 
ov 
The child that’s born on Sabbath day 
Is blithe and bonny, good and gay. 
Monday’s child is fair of face, 
Tuesday’s child is full of grace, 
Wednesday’s child is born for woe, 
Thursday’s child has far to go, 
Friday’s child is for loving and giving, 
Saturday’s child has to work for a living. 
PROC, AMER. PHILOS. SOC. xxv. 128. U. PRINTED SEPT. 11, 1888. 
