Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions

Subject: Folklore: Clock (or time) related supers
From: Neighmond
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 09:19 PM

Hello after a long hiatus!

May I pick your brains?

I am currently working on a long project, attempting to document superstitions, both American and Foreign, related to watches and clocks, and time in general. If any member has some to share, can they post them or try and PM them to me? If they have any historical information with it (my Grandma, who came from ------, used to say this, or we learned this living in -------, etc.) I would gladly appreciate it. Also, if you wish to be accredited for your information in my research.

If anyone has any other source that may be helpful, I am always open to new sources.

Thanks in advance!

Chaz

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: Jack Campin
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 09:40 PM

Not a superstition, but a piece of mechanical folklore.

My grandfather (born in London in the 1880s, lived there all his life) was a multi-skilled tradesman who worked as a patternmaker in an electrical engineering works. He could fix just about anything. He said that when adjusting the time on a clock, you should never wind the hands backwards - if you wanted to take it back five minutes, take it forward 11 hours 55 minutes instead. He said the mechanism would last better if you did that.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: Beer
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 09:43 PM

That is very good information Jack.
Thank you.
ad.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: Neighmond
Date: 19 Jul 11 - 10:14 PM

Got it-it takes on almost a superstitious importance. I suppose a few time of getting the strike out of sequence'll and having to dink around with it'll do that.

One of the variants is not to turn the hands back but rather stop the clock and start it at the right time.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 12:01 AM

Surely the prime superstition, as found in Henry Clay Work's My Grandfather's Clock, which was

...bought on the morn of the day that he was born
It was alsways his treasure and pride
But it stopped, short, never to go again
When the old man died

is that the clock will cease to function on its owner's death. I remember, at the climax of the film of Pushkin's The Queen Of Spades, when a loud ticking on the sound track stops at the moment the old countess (Edith Evans IIRC) snuffs it.

~Michael~

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 20 Jul 11 - 01:14 AM

From Ozark Superstitions by Vance Randolph (New York: Columbian University Press, 1947):

Page 240:

There are numerous miscellaneous superstitions regarding animals and plants, which do not fall conveniently into any of the classes hitherto discussed. For example, there is the notion that roosters always crow at midnight, and again about 5 A.M., but that on Christmas morning they all sound off exactly at three o'clock. In some sections, farmers insist that snake doctors (Odonata) are never seen over the fields before 10 A.M. or after 4 P.M. The harvest fly or summer locust, a big yellow cicada, is supposed to begin its song precisely at high noon ; I have seen a farmer stop work in the field and set his watch by the harvest fly's note.

Page 278:

Mrs. Mabel E. Mueller, Rolla, Missouri, tells of an old man who was much alarmed when his clock suddenly began to strike at random. On one occasion it struck fifteen or twenty times before he could get it stopped. Mrs. Mueller made some humorous remark about this, but the old man was deadly serious, declaring that a witch was responsible. He carried the clock out of the house at once and sold it for a very low price. Later on a friend showed him that a part of the clock's mechanism was broken, but the old man still believed that a witch had somehow caused the trouble.

Page 301:

Hillfolk are always upset by any unusual clicking or rumbling in a clock they think that a relative or close friend must be dying at the moment when the sound is heard. If a clock that has not run for a long time suddenly begins to strike, there will be a death in the house within the number of days, weeks, or months indicated by the chimes, but there's a wide difference of opinion about the interpretation of this material.

Page 811:

There is a common belief that dying persons are particularly apt to take off just as the clock strikes the hour. Some say that more people die at 4 A.M. than at any other time. Mrs. Anna Bacon, of Stone county, Missouri, is an old woman who has seen many people die, and she says that "the change of the hour," meaning midnight, is the best time to go, if one has any choice in the matter.

Page 812:

When a death finally occurs, one of the bereaved neighbors rises immediately from the bedside and stops the clock. Everybody knows that if the clock should happen to stop of itself while a corpse is lying in the house, another member of the family would die within a year, and it is considered best to take no chances. Several families near Southwest City, Missouri, are somehow persuaded that the old custom of stopping the clock is derived from the Indians. When I pointed out that the old-time Indians had no clocks, and that some local Indians have no clocks even today, these people said no more. But they still believe that the stop-the-clock business is based upon "a old Injun idy."

page 319

Many of the old-timers think that all burials should take place before noon ; if a body is buried after 12 o'clock, another member of the family is likely to die soon. But this is no longer insisted upon, except among some very old-fashioned families. In pioneer times the funeral lasted most of the day, with hillfolk milling around the buryin' ground for three or four hours after the corpse was buried and the grave filled up. There was preachin' and prayin' and singin' all day long, with time out at noon to eat the "basket dinner" which each family brought with them in the wagon.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: GUEST
Date: 22 Jul 11 - 09:08 PM

So what others can people remember?

What about superstitions involving machines in general (Tractors, cars, work equipment, etc.)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: GUEST,Bernadette
Date: 17 Sep 19 - 10:40 PM

I don't want to get into family or how,why I am keen to know why a little clock I have has started ticking and the pendulum swinging when it hasn't been wound for months. There is one beside it, exactly the same that's stayed stopped. The fact that this has been ticking for days is also strange, as it's a miniature and the mechanics aren't very large....very small Spring....and usually needs wound every day! Any thoughts?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 18 Sep 19 - 02:25 AM

A mate of mine used to say !A watched clock never boils"

Machines;
One of the last stories we recorded from Travellers concerned of the old custom of destroying the belongings of Travellers who died - it largely died out when they moved into towns
Kerry Traveller, Mikeen McCarthy told us of the old Irish man travelling in the Bristol area who instructed his family not to waste what he left behind by destroying it
Some of the more traditional ones decided to mark his memory by burning his flat-back truck, thinking it would just explode with the full tank; instead, it started up of its own accord and ran around the field three times before it finally came to a halt

The old belief among Irish Travellers of not mourning the dead too much in case they came back, was still current in rural Kerry well into the 20th century
The belief was that, if you continued to mourn them after midnight, more than a set number of days (three, I think), they would not be able to rest
The custom was to celebrate their memory up to midnight, kiss the forehead of the corpse before midnight, then go away and stop mourning
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 18 Sep 19 - 03:33 AM

Fact.-
My first wife died while we away at my parent's home in Somerset. When I returned home to South Wales the bedside clock had stopped at the time of her death.

Robin

Subject: RE: Folklore: Clock (or time) related superstitions
From: JHW
Date: 18 Sep 19 - 04:51 AM

My dad (long RIP) gave me a Seiko digital watch. I wore it swim after swim, 3 a week at least those days plus all the dry time in between. The very first swim after dad died all the displays on the watch went black and that was the end of it and Seiko by then didn't do digital watches anymore.
Same dad had spent many an hour trying to get the mantelpiece clock chimes in sync with the right hour.