The Seventh Son of the Seventh Son
Grose remarks as a popular superstition that the seventh son of a seventh son is born a physician, having an intuitive knowledge of the art of healing all disorders, and sometimes the faculty of performing wonderful cures by touching only.
It is recorded as a superstition in Yorkshire (1819), that if any woman has seven boys in succession, the last should be bred to the profession of medicine, in which he would be sure of being successful.
In an article on “Fairy Superstitions in Donegal,” published in the University Magazine for August, 1879, are the following statements respecting the seventh son: “It is not generally known that a particular ceremony must be observed at the moment of the infant’s birth, in order to give him his healing power. The woman who receives him in her arms places in his tiny hand whatever substance she decides that he shall rub with in after life, and she is very careful not to let him touch anything until this shall have been accomplished. If silver is to be the charm, she has provided a sixpenny or threepenny bit; but as the coinage of the realm may possibly change during his lifetime, and thus render his cure valueless, she has more likely placed meal or salt upon the table, within reach. Sometimes it is determined that he is to rub with his own hair, and in this case the father is summoned and requested to kneel down before his new-born son, whose little fingers are guided to his head, and helped to close upon a lock of hair. Whatever substance a seventh son rubs with must be worn by his patients so long as they live.”