Magpie legends of olde England

Free Floating Honesty
#1

Continuing the discussion from Post a photo from where you live:

They’re a little different to British magpies. Ours have white stripes across their wings. Do you have the weird superstition about magpies? Seeing one is bad luck. Seeing 2 is good luck. One is the sight you want to avoid. I didn’t know magpies from canaries until we moved here. People still believe the myth and I’m ashamed to tell you I now get a little worried if there’s a solo one. You can undo the harm by touching your forehead and saying “good day, Mr Magpie.”
There’s a rhyme about them too:

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl
And 4 for a boy.

There probably used to be more, it sounds like a superstition hundreds of years old. I will neither confirm or deny saluting solitary magpies.

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#2

The rhyme I heard in a Counting Crows song - The Murder Of One I believe British Magpies are of the crow family. I’d don’t have a superstition about magpies, I see lots of them. the magpies down here don’t bother you but they tend to swoop during nesting season if walk under their tree. Some parks have signs with a warning. People have been injured by swooping magpies, in one tragic case, a mother carrying her baby in a sling on a walk got swooped, she fell over, her baby sadly was fatally injured. I can understand how superstitions start. My mother is superstitious about owls. One stayed around for days in a tree at night when her mother was sick. She recovered when the owl left.