Saturday child
The term Saturday child originally referred to a figure in European folklore, but which has long since disappeared from Western European folk tradition and has been replaced by the Sunday child.
Saturday children were born on a Saturday - often on a Saturday considered magical or auspicious in popular belief, for example in the quarter of December or during the rough nights at the turn of the year - and were able to see originally returning dead , ghosts and demons and fight or destroy them.
history
Since the 7th and 8th centuries, there has been a sharper demarcation from the Jewish traditions, whereby Saturday, which coincided with the Jewish Sabbath , was increasingly replaced by Sunday as a sacred day. The final and binding determination of the holy day was made by the Council of Arles in 1260 . As a result of this development, the qualities (such as ghost seers and hunters) that were ascribed to children born on a Saturday were gradually transferred to people born on the "day of the Lord". It is not known when this transfer process was completed.
In some remote areas of Germany, traces of belief in the special characteristics of a Saturday child could still be found at the beginning of the 20th century, for example in Upper Franconia , where it was said that children born on a Saturday during the rough nights or on a Quatern Saturday hear more and can see as other people. Something similar is reported from the Eifel and the neighboring Belgian Ardennes , where those born on a quarter Saturday or on a Saturday during the Rauhnächte could foresee the death of other people in ghostly visions or had to drag those who had just died on their backs to their future grave. Around 1910, the practiced North Wales Betws-y-Coed a miracle doctor by profession shepherd, who described himself as "Sabbatarian" and attributed the farmers in the area special because its date of birth healing powers.
Popular belief
People born on the right day but at the wrong hour were seen as potentially dangerous: in the Ardennes it was believed that a boy born on the night between a magical Saturday and Sunday would do so in later life be damned to harm people or even to behave as werewolf while the girls became witches or nightmare . This belief was also widespread in Pomerania . The unfortunate or ominous birth at night was particularly feared during the rough nights
A popular belief in various parts of Western Europe as far as Scotland was that Saturday children are lazy and stupid, indulge in all kinds of vice and die early. At the bridal show, a Saturday child was often seen as not very desirable. A wife born on Saturday was considered wasteful in southwest Germany, the man an incorrigible drunkard. This attribution of negative characteristics seems to be due to the reinterpretation of Saturday in favor of Sunday by the Catholic Church. This is probably related to the fact that in large parts of Europe in earlier times you shouldn't get married on Saturday because the day brought bad luck.
In the sphere of influence of the Orthodox churches, the term Saturday child has survived for such a talented person. A person who can track down and kill vampires is called "subatnik" in Serbia and "sabbatanios" in Greece . Both names reveal the Hebrew word "sabbat". The figures mentioned are related to the "kresnik" of the Croatian folk tradition. They are considered to be mindful and can use the power of their aura or their body excretions ( saliva , urine ) to banish and destroy harmful revenants . When a village was struck by a vampire, a "subatnik" was brought in, who then led a horse - mostly a white horse - across the cemetery. If the animal shied away or refused to go on, the undead's grave was discovered, and the "subatnik" pierced the body with a stake or urinated on the soil above the suspicious corpse, whereupon, according to tradition, it immediately crumbled to dust.
Although the Serbian, Bulgarian and Greek Saturday children were protected from the attacks by revenants, the vampires often retaliated by damaging the ghost hunter's family or destroying their property in order to drive them insane. Such stories, which recall the fate of the biblical Job , were also the subject of popular ballads on several occasions. The gift of being able to see and destroy vampires was therefore feared by the people, and so the mothers of Saturday children tried to protect their offspring by not giving away anything about the fateful due date. When on the night of their thirteenth or fourteenth birthday the other Saturday children appeared in front of the house and asked the birthday child to join them in the fight against the monsters of the night, the mother replied that her son was away. When the rest of the Saturday children left, the child had lost the unwanted ability for good. According to M. Boskovic-Stulli, this popular belief was widespread in the former Yugoslavia half a century ago .
literature
- George F. Abbott: Macedonian Folklore. Cambridge 1903.
- Hans Bächtli-Stäubli (ed.): Concise dictionary of German superstition . Berlin 1927–42, 10 volumes (reprinted Berlin 2000). - Especially vol. 7 u. 8th.
- Maja Boskovic-Stulli: Kresnik-Krsnik, a being from the Croatian and Slovenian folk tradition. In: Fabula 3 (1960), 275-298
- William Henderson: Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders. London 1878.
- Peter Kremer: Dracula's cousins. On the trail of the vampire belief in Germany. Düren 2006.
- Charlotte Latham: Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868. In: The Folk-Lore Record 1 (1878), pp. 1-67.
- Mary L. Lewes: Stranger than fiction being tales from the byways of ghost and folklore. London 1911.
- Bernhard Schmidt: The popular life of the modern Greeks and the Hellenic antiquity. Leipzig 1871.