to spit on the ground, and make a cross with his finger, or stick,
through the spittle, and boldly say--

"Satan, I defy thee,"

and the curse, or bad luck, indicated by the appearance of the magpie,
could not then come.

The number of magpies seen implied different events. It was a common
saying:--

One's grief, two's mirth,
Three's a marriage, four's a birth;

and another rendering of the above heard in Montgomeryshire was:--

One for bad luck,
Two for good luck,
Three for a wedding,
Four for a burying.

Another ditty is as follows:--

One's joy, two's greet (crying),
Three's a wedding, four's a sheet (death).

As stated above, one is grief, or bad luck, if it flies from right to
left, but if from left to right it implied success or joy. So these
various readings can only be reconciled by a little verbal explanation,
but "four's a birth" cannot be made to be an equivalent to "four's a
sheet," a winding sheet, or a burying, by any amount of ingenuity.

Should a magpie be seen stationary on a tree, it was believed that the
direction in which it took its flight foretold either success or disaster
to the person who observed it. If it flew to the left, bad luck was to
follow; if to the right, good luck; if straight, the journey could be
undertaken, provided the bird did not turn to the left whilst in sight,
but disappeared in that direction.

I heard the following tale in Denbighshire:--In days of old, a company of
men were stealthily making their way across the country to come upon the
enemy unawares. All at once they espied a magpie on a tree, and by
common consent they halted to see which way it would take its flight, and
thus foretell the fortune which would attend their journey. One of the
party, evidently an unbeliever in his comrades' superstition, noiselessly
approached the bird, and shot it dead, to the great horror of his
companions. The leader of the party, in great anger, addressed the
luckless archer--"You have shot the bird of fate, and you shall be shot."
The dauntless man said, "I shot the magpie, it is true, but if it could
foretell our fate, why could it not foresee its own?" The archer's
reasoning was good, but I do not know whether people were convinced by
logic in those distant times, any more than they are in ours.

I will relate one other tale of the magpie, which I heard upwards of
twenty years ago in the parish of Llanwnog, Montgomeryshir