Say ‘good morning Mr Magpie’ to the first Magpie is see each day.
My mum used to do this – but only single magpies; one for sorrow, etc. Two or more together, and the bad luck is negated after all, two for joy). You had to say Morning Mr Magpie but that didn’t get the luck taken away, that was just something you had to do.
So far so not abnormally weird, plenty have heard of or have similar superstition to that.
However, in my Mum’s world – if the single magpie was seen by more than one person simultaneously, then the bad luck IS negated. So, she’d need to get someone else to see it – but you couldn’t ask them to see it. It had to be sort of unsolicited. So many’s the time as a kid I’d be working in my room or watching TV or whatever and I’d get an urgent call to come into the kitchen. But she couldn’t say ‘come into the kitchen and see this magpie’. Pretty soon I was aware what the Code M, Jonny to kitchen type call meant and would immediately scan the trees in the garden, but you had to be careful to not scare it away before having a firm visual….. she wouldn’t stand for a pretend sighting. Even if I could describe it fairly accurately.
I’m still not clear on additive effects – if you see one, and then at a later juncture see another (assumed to be different; two single magpie sightings in the same garden a few minutes apart are assumed to be the same one obviously, despite evidence of seeing seven or more together from time to time) – I don’t know if that counts as 2×1 so now two bad luck events incoming (unless obvs seen unsolicited by AN Other subject to aforementioned clause 3.b.1 above, etc) – or is that 1×2 and hence some good fortune is coming your way?
I miss my mum, even if she was a bit mad.
