The monkish verses of unlucky days

An old monkish calendar gave the unlucky days of every month in a Latin verse, and for January it named the first and the seventh, days that cut like a sword. John Gibbon, the herald, had found the verses in a manuscript prayer book as old as Henry VI or Edward IV. Aubrey reprinted Gibbon’s list and added that he had seen the same verses in several mass books and in the calendar printed with Bede’s works. He presumed they were grounded on experience, though no one had kept a record of what went wrong on those days.