Coffins from the Fire

Chambers’s Suffolk correspondent listed the household omens of death. A candle that guttered and left a strip of unmelted tallow was making a winding-sheet, and if the strip curled away from the flame it foretold the death of whoever it pointed to. A hollow oblong cinder that spat out of the fire was a coffin and meant a death in the family, while an oval one was a cradle, foretelling a baby, and a round one a purse, foretelling prosperity. A dog howling at night under a sick-room window, or an owl screeching as it flew past, was also taken for a warning of death.