Before garlic there was the bent silver coin

Comments

• lordmarcovan Posts: 43,895 ✭✭✭✭✭

  August 13, 2003 3:06PM

  Yep.
  
  There's also the old wedding tradition that almost certainly has similar roots.
  
  
  
  << <i>Something borrowed
  Something blue
  And a crooked sixpence
  In her shoe >>
  
  
  
  Or something like that.
  
  I've had folks buy sixpence coins from me to put in brides' shoes on their wedding day, so at least a trace of the old tradition lives on today. In fact, a friend of mine on the Darkside forums put an 1890's sixpence in his wife's shoe on their wedding day. I didn't have one handy on my own wedding day, but my wife put a penny or two in her shoes, without any prompting from me (apparently her family has done that for generations). They don't bend the sixpence (or pennies) anymore, though. Seems it would be pretty uncomfortable! Also, modern coins aren't as easy to bend as the old hammered silver coins were.
  
  It was also traditional to bend a silver coin, one edge up, and one edge down, to give to one's sweetheart as a "love token". This tradition survived into Colonial America, as several detectorists have found such coins in the Northeast. Usually these were sixpence, too, but Spanish reales were also used this way.

  
  
  

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• keets Posts: 25,351 ✭✭✭✭✭

  August 13, 2003 3:22PM

  Did you know this? Back in the `Witch trial days` in Salem, Mass, it was believed that if you carried a
  bent silver coin in your pocket this would ward-off witches.
  
  hey Cam
  
  i can't speak to that "old wives tale" but i can tell you from experience that having too much coin in my pocket has certainly attracted some witches!!
  
  al h.

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• Bear Posts: 18,953 ✭✭✭

  August 13, 2003 3:26PM

  Keets, were any of the witches numismatists?

  There once was a place called
  Camelot

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• Cam40 Posts: 8,146 ✭

  August 13, 2003 3:50PM

  Maybe they were thinking`Is that a roll of coins in your pocket ,or are you just happy to see me` lol

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• Robgetty Posts: 1,112

  August 13, 2003 5:51PM

  I've never heard of it as a "crooked sixpence", just a sixpence in your shoe.
  
  I know several people who have done that. I got a nice old one for my wife
  10 years ago. (Of course she never gave it back; oh well: so much for that
  uncirculated six pence!)

  Robert Getty - Lifetime project to complete the finest collection of 1872 dated coins.

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• Gemini Posts: 3,085 ✭

  August 13, 2003 7:59PM

  May have come from this old poem....
  There was a crooked man who walked a crooked mile he found a crooked six pence against a crooked stile...

  A thing of beauty is a joy for ever

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• dorkkarl Posts: 12,691 ✭✭✭

  August 13, 2003 10:13PM

  many have been straightened back out too. there are even examples of coins broken in 2 that were soldered back together. personally, i love that sort of thing.
  
  K S

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