The Bible and Key

The writer of the 1831 list was asked to lend his Bible to a neighbour whose lodger had lost her husband’s shirt, since for the charm to work neither Bible nor key could belong to anyone in the house. A key was bound into the book at the verse in the first chapter of Ruth, and a boy and a girl, for it had to be a bachelor and a maid, balanced it on the middle fingers of their right hands. The loser named each person in the house in turn with the words of the verse, and when the name of an old crony of hers was spoken the book turned and fell, to a great uproar. Then the husband came home and said he had put the shirt away in his chest himself, and the woman who had proposed the charm declared it had never failed before and only failed now because the writer had laughed, for the Bible would not be laughed at.