Myths and origin of the tales!

'Let the superstitious wife
Near the child's heart lay a knife.
Point be up, and haft be down,
While she gossips in the town.
This amongst other mystic charms
Keeps the sleeping child from harms.' (Robert Herrick)

Superstition and Old Wives tale are one of the most fascinating things. Every superstition / old wives tale has a logical explanation but who wants to know!

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Take for instance 'Friday the 13th', no one knows its origin, but humour has it that ancient Romans devoted every 6th day of the week to their stunning, but futile, goddess Venus.So Friday became the most important day for them.

Some say the biblical Eve offered the fruit to Adam on a Friday, they ate the forbidden fruit on a Friday, and afterward both died on a Friday.

The Uruguayan Rugby team infamously crashed in the Andes mountain range on Friday the 13th October, 1972.

Lake Storm "Aphid", an out-of-season snowstorm that wrought havoc on the Buffalo, New York area took place on Friday, October 13, 2006.

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Mermaids

Mermaids .. Little mermaid ! Where did they come from .... Sailors imagination

Legends of half-human, half-fish creatures go back thousands of years. Many medieval sailors claimed to have seen them and such reports continued right into the 1900's. Going by the profession sailors were on long voyages for months and even years accompanied by no female companion. A human longs for human touch and has to fulfil the anxiety in them. So these sailors were no different, they partied hard drank all day long. It is believed that Christopher Columbus once on a journey mistaken a seal for a mermaid... He was drunk and thought its a lady in the water so had the creature captured on the deck. To explain the apparent confusion some people have pointed out that the vagina of female sea-cows is very similar to that of a human female. So it could be that sailors may have had sex with manatees, and to cover up this act of bestiality they claimed they had intercourse with a mermaid.

Another well explained reason is 'Female divers' in Korea , strange it may sound but women used to go fetch food from the sea, collect shells and do the chores what today we think is the duty of a man. Since everyone is determined on the thought that women are weak and are incapable of performing such tasks so it was done secretly. When the sailors came floating in these areas, these female sea divers rescued them. Half unconscious the sailors, just saw women in their diving suits and assumed that mermaids saved their lives.

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 Vampires

Today everything is given a logical explanation, infarct Vampires too. It is said that in ancient times the doctors would use the 'hit-and-try' methods to cure their patience. They weren’t well versed with the term unconscious and thus declared many people dead who were merely unconscious for some reason like lack of proper diet etc. Some were buried in coffins while some were buried in the ground, not dug deep. When you burry an unconscious being he's got to get up some time sooner, so when they did they struggled their way out from the grave, ,some were able to pull themselves out while some died in the process with their hands above the ground making it look even more scarier. Those who were out were covered in mud and were of course hungry so they found food in garbage and lived on whatever they could manage. People saw these poor creatures and assumed them to be blood sucking vampires and thus giving rise to a myth - living in the dark, sucking blood and etc etc ... 

There is more to this and everything above! It's simply marvellous to study the history and origins to these myths. 
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You can read more about what does it mean if you sneeze , yawn or do any little thing! I'll keep you glued for sometime! Happy reading !

SUPERSTITIONS and OLD WIVES' TALES 

http://www.whimsy.org.uk/superstitions.html