In by the Back Door

Printed under 7 September

Lore and belief

It was unlucky to go into a house you were about to live in by the back door. Chambers’s correspondent knew a family who went to look over a newly hired house and, finding the front door shut up, went in at the back. Their old Scottish servant burst into tears and sat on a stone outside, and would only go in once the front door had been opened for her.

It is unlucky to enter a house, which you are going to occupy, by the back-door.

From Chambers's Book of Days, vol. 2, p. 322. Read the original

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