DEXTRALIST SUPERSTITIONS

As it happens to be International Left-Handedness Day, why not tackle the issue of dextralism once more? -- Not as well-known as racism, sexism, or queerphobia, but nevertheless a form of discrimination. This article is about how the sinister side is omnipresent in superstition and magical thinking... Now I'm a freethinker in general, but also interested in folklore and the like. So please take these superstitions with a grain of salt (and, oui, the one with salt is featured on this list!).

Black cats, as well as corvids, bring good luck crossing a person's path from right to left, granting favourable times. But from left to right, the black cat or crow-relative is a bad omen.

Spilling sodium chloride, aka table salt, during meals, often by overturning the salt shaker, is also allegedly an evil omen. The most common contemporary belief requires you to toss a pinch of the spilt salt over your left shoulder, into the face of the shoulder devil (the angel is on the right -- remember any old Western cartoons where they appear) who lurks there.

The Scottish Play, the one with the usurper and the three witches and the indelible blood stains, left (pun intended!) its curse on me during the 4th centennial celebrations in the springtime of 2016, when I was to attend a performance of Mac**th in Valencia and mentioned its title (and surname of the titular usurpers) more than thrice. After attending the play without a hitch, my bad luck streak (which forced me to call my retelling of the story Los Usurpadores and omit the fatal Mac- surname) did not cease until I cast something over my left shoulder as well... this time, a frothy glob of spit into the faces of the three witches who haunted me!

If someone had a bad day, we say in Spanish "se ha levantado con el pie izquierdo". Unluckily, yours truly is left-footed as well... but luckily, she's generally a freethinker who does not pay much heed which foot she gets first out of bed, over a threshold, up some stairs or ladders...

Finally, engagement and wedding rings are worn on the left ring finger because, in a surprising twist, there is allegedly a vein or a meridian or nadi that leads straight to the heart from there! And we use our left hearts for systemic circulation (unless dextrocardia) and thus feel that our hearts are more on the left side... so in a heartbeat we have gone from dextralism to a sinistralist superstition, to end on a positive note!

ECHO AND NARCISSUS - I

ECHO AND NARCISSUS
Adapted from the retelling by Elsie Finnimore Buckley

Dedicated to María Calzada, my own Waterloo
In English lands this tale you may be reading,
to your name on the line above just heeding,
or thinking of me with your heart and soul,
faintly whispering from afar:
"I'd give you the brightest star
for a nightlight
to grace each evening or midnight sight".

First Story
A light maiden angers a powerful queen:
the punishment is quite a cruel, unjust scene.

In the flowery groves of Helicon Echo was once a fair nymph who, hand in hand with her sisters, sported along the green lawns and by the side of the mountain-streams. Among them all her feet were the lightest and her laugh the merriest, and in the telling of tales not one of them could touch her. So if ever any among them were plotting mischief in their hearts, they would say to her,

"Echo, thou weaver of words, go thou and sit beside Hera in her bower, and beguile her with a tale that she come not forth and find us. See thou make it a long one, Echo, and we will give thee a garland to twine in thy hair."

And Echo would laugh a gay laugh, which rang through the grove.

"What will you do when she tires of my tales?" she asked.

"When that time comes we shall see," said they.

So with another laugh she would trip away and cast herself on the grass at Hera's feet. When Hera looked upon Echo her stern brow would relax, and she would smile upon her and stroke her hair.

"What hast thou come for now, thou sprite?" she would ask.

"I had a great longing to talk with thee, great Hera," she would answer, "and I have a tale—a wondrous new tale—to tell thee."

"Thy tales are as many as the risings of the sun, Echo, and each one of them as long as an old man's beard."

"The day is yet young, mother," she would say, "and the tales I have told thee before are as mud which is trampled underfoot by the side of the one I shall tell thee now."

"Go to, then," said Hera, "and if it pleases me I will listen to the end."

So Echo would sit upon the grass at Hera's feet, and with her eyes fixed upon her face she would tell her tale. She had the gift of words, and, moreover, she had seen and heard many strange things which she alone could tell of. These she would weave into romances, adding to them as best pleased her, or taking from them at will; for the best of tale-tellers are those who can lie, but who mingle in with their lies some grains of truth which they have picked from their own experience. And Hera would forget her watchfulness and her jealousies, and listen entranced, while the magic of Echo's words made each scene live before her eyes. Meanwhile the nymphs would sport to their hearts' content and never fear her anger.

But at last came the black day of reckoning when Hera found out the prank which Echo had played upon her so long, and the fire of her wrath flashed forth like lightning.

"The gift whereby thou hast deceived me shall be thine no more," she cried. "Henceforward thou shalt be dumb till someone else has spoken, and then, even if thou wilt, thou shalt not hold thy tongue, but must needs repeat once more the last words that have been spoken."

"Alas! alas!" cried the nymphs in chorus.

"Alas! alas!" cried Echo after them, and could say no more, though she longed to speak and beg Hera to forgive her. So did it come to pass that she lost her voice, and could only say that which others put in her mouth, whether she wished it or no.