_Death-bed Superstition_. (No. 20. p. 315.).--The practice of opening doors and boxes when a person dies, is founded on the idea that the ministers of purgatorial pains took the soul as it escaped from the body, and flattening it against some closed door (which alone would serve the purpose), crammed it into the hinges and hinge openings; thus the soul in torment was likely to be miserably pinched and squeezed by the movement on casual occasion of such door or lid: an open or swinging door frustrated this, and the fiends had to try some other locality. The friends of the departed were at least assured that they were not made the unconscious instruments of torturing the departed in their daily occupations. The superstition prevails in the North as well as in the West of England; and a similar one exists in the South of Spain, where I have seen it practised. Among the Jews at Gibraltar, at which place I have for many years been a resident, there is also a strange custom when a death occurs in the house; and this consists in pouring away all the water contained in any vessel, the superstition being that the angel of death may have washed his sword therein. TREBOR. * * * * * _May Marriages_.--It so happened that yesterday I had both a Colonial Bishop and a Home Archdeacon taking part in the services of my church, and visiting at my house; and, by a singular coincidence, both had been solicited by friends to perform the marriage ceremony not later than to-morrow, because in neither case would the bride-elect submit to be married in the month of May. I find that it is a common notion amongst ladies, that May marriages are unlucky. Can any one inform me whence this prejudice arose? ALFRED GATTY. Ecclesfield, April 29. 1850. [This superstition is as old as Ovid's time, who tells us in his _Fasti_, "Nec viduae taedis eadem, nec virginis apta Tempora. Quae nupsit non diuturna fuit. Hac quoque de causa (si te proverbia tangunt), Mense malas Maio nubere vulgus ait." The last line, as our readers may remember, (see _ante_, No. 7. p. 97.), was fixed on the gates of Holyrood on the morning (16th of May) after the marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and Bothwell.] * * * * * _Throwing Old Shoes at a Wedding_.--At a wedding lately, the bridesmaids, after accompanying the bride to the hall-door, threw into the carriage, on the departure of the newly-married couple, a number of old shoes which they had concealed somewhere. On inquiry, I find this custom is not uncommon; I should be glad to be favoured with any particulars respecting its origin and meaning, and the antiquity of it. ARUN. [We have some NOTES on the subject of throwing Old Shoes after a person as a means of securing them good fortune, which we hope to insert in an early Number.] * * * * *