Tradition says that a godless fellow who died long ago of incessant sneezing, during an epidemic of the plague at Wurmlingen in Würtemberg, was condemned on account of his sins to wander about the neighborhood, still sneezing at intervals. One day, while one of the villagers was crossing a bridge over some meadows near the town, he heard some one underneath sneeze twice, and each time he piously responded, “God help thee!” When, however, he heard a third sneeze, the villager thought to himself, “That fellow may keep on sneezing for a long time and make a fool of me.” So he cried out angrily, “May the Devil help you!” Thereupon a voice from under the bridge exclaimed pitifully, “If you had only said, ‘God help thee!’ a third time, I should have been freed from the spell which binds me.”[405] DAYS OF GOOD AND EVIL OMEN Friday’s moon, Come when it will, it comes too soon. _Proverb._ I. EGYPTIAN DAYS The belief in lucky and unlucky days appears to have been first taught by the magicians of ancient Chaldea, and we learn from history that similar notions affected every detail of primitive Babylonian life, thousands of years before Christ. Reference to an “unlucky month” is to be found in a list of deprecatory incantations contained in a document from the library of the royal palace at Nineveh. This document is written in the Accadian dialect of the Turanian language, which was akin to that spoken in the region of the lower Euphrates; a language already obsolete and unintelligible to the Assyrians of the seventh century B. C.[406] Certain days were called _Dies Egyptiaci_, because they were thought to have been pronounced unlucky by the astrologers of ancient Egypt. In that country the unlucky days were, however, fewer in number than the fortunate ones, and they also differed in the degree of their ill-luck. Thus, while some were markedly ominous, others merely threatened misfortune, and still others were of mixed augury, partly good and partly evil. There were certain days upon which absolute idleness was enjoined upon the people, when they were expected to sit quietly at home, indulging in _dolce far niente_.[407] The poet Hesiod, who is believed to have flourished about one thousand years B. C., in the third book of his poem, “Works and Days,” which is indeed a kind of metrical almanac, distinguishes lucky days from others, and gives advice to farmers regarding the most favorable days for the various operations of agriculture. Thus he recommends the eleventh of the month as excellent for reaping corn, and the twelfth for shearing sheep. But the thirteenth was an unlucky day for sowing, though favorable for planting. The fifth of each month was an especially unfortunate day, while the thirtieth was the most propitious of all.