Indeed, this superstition is not confined to a knife, but extends to any sharp or cutting instrument, such as a pair of scissors, a razor, &c. To avoid the danger of such a misfortune, some trifling recompense must be made in return. This superstition was confuted by a versifier of the last century--the Rev. Samuel Bishop--who presented a knife to his wife on her fifteenth wedding-day, with a copy of some very clever verses of which the following are a specimen:-- "A knife, dear girl, cuts love, they say, Mere modish love perhaps it may; For any tool of any kind Can separate what was never joined; The knife that cuts our love in two Will have much tougher work to do; Must cut your softness, worth, and spirit, Down to the vulgar size of merit," &c. Some consider it unlucky to find a knife, from a notion that it will bring ill-luck to them; while others again often place a knife near a sleeping child as a charm to preserve it from danger, a belief to which Herrick thus refers:-- "Let the superstitious wife Near the child's heart lay a knife; Point be up, and haft be down; While she gossips in the town. This 'mongst other mystic charms Keeps the sleeping child from harms." Even the loaf of bread, too, without which the most frugal board would be incomplete, has not escaped without its quota of folk-lore. Thus, many a housewife still marks the sign of the cross upon her loaf before placing it in the oven, just as the Durham butcher does to the shoulder of a sheep or lamb after taking off the skin--the notion probably being to protect it against the injurious influence of witchcraft. In many parts of Scotland peasants were formerly in the habit of making a cross on their tools, considering that by so doing they would be rendered safe against the mischievous pranks of the fairy folks as they went on their midnight errands. Again, if a loaf accidentally parts in the hand while an unmarried lady is cutting it, this either prognosticates that she will not be married during the next twelve months, or, what is still worse, that there will be a dissension of some kind in the family. Some, too, have a superstitious objection to turning a loaf upside-down after cutting it. Herrick refers to the custom of carrying a crust of bread in the pocket for luck's sake--a practice which is not quite obsolete:-- "If ye fear to be affrighted When ye are, by chance, benighted; In your pocket for a trust Carry nothing but a crust, For that holy piece of bread Charms the danger and the dread."