Brits Spitting on Hands for Good Luck?
 

Recently on Coronation Street, the long-running favourite British TV soap opera, two folks when wishing themselves luck in some endeavor each spit on their own hands - one first then the other.

As a frequent traveler to Britain I like to understand local customs - it is an important or more to me as seeing museums?

Is this a common thing and how did it develop - or is it the imagination of some Corrie script writer?

Thanks

PQ

No-one knows.

There's hundreds of 'spitting for luck' traditions around Britain: spitting on money, spitting on shoes, fingers. All sorts of things.

There are also tens of millions of people in Britain who've never been exposed to anything so weird. My memory is I first saw it at primary school - and even then, in Coronation St heartland, lots of children in the class (50 of us in one class) were puzzled by it.

It's first documented in John Aubrey's Remaines (1686), but there's no hint it was novel then.

So the question is: are you sure it didn't cross the Atlantic?

flanner - thanks for your as usual erudite explanation. and no I am no more sure than you where you say lots of Brits have never been exposed to this that Americans may not have been - but in all my years I have never seen or heard of this as a Yankee tradition.

anyway thanks for your response!

I remember a few times, in my youth, where men would spit on their hands, shake to seal a deal. Generally working class, farm workers, tree fallers, truck drivers. However I haven't seen it done for many, many years.

well iIhave lived the majority of my life in the Uk and have never ever spat on my hands for luck.
I must admit in my youth i did see it happen amoung the older generation but that was half a century ago,which is the same period Coronation street still lives in.

From the series Bones (pilot) - "Spit in my hand, we're Scully and Mulder" so clearly spitting in the hand before shaking hands ona deal isn't unknown in the US

"half a century ago,which is the same period Coronation street still lives in"

We might quibble on the precise level of inaccuracy of Coronation St. But I think any well-informed observer would say:

1. Coronation St is a silly combination of the currently politically correct, crude ratings-chasing (a murder a week is about the norm) and dowright silly assumptions that the date's still 1960.
2. But it's still lightyears ahead, in sympathy for its characters, ability to pull an audience and sheer bloody quality of acting, characterisation and staging than any other soap bar one.
3. That bar one being The Archers. Which gets half Coronation St's audience - but on radio. Where else on earth does the leading radio soap get half the leading TV soap's audience?
4. Anyone with half a brain reaches for his gun when he hears the Archers signature tune. But he still knows the key Archers plotlines.

Well there must be some reason Corrie is still at or near the top of British telly ratings after being on so so many years - it must relate to some folk living in the modern age. I love it because it does show a slice of British life that is so so different than the Royal Crap we get like this Royal Wedding fiasco - and yes it is not anymore real British life than say Dallas was to American life - but still the usual British cultural things like the Pub, the Kebab Shop, the Corner shop run by a South Asian, Roy's Rolls cafe, etc. But yes in that new data of crime in the U.K. Coronation Street would no doubt be at the very top!

All I can say is ICK!

Palenq- if Coronation St is at the top of UK television crime stats, it must share this position with MidSommer Murders. In the endless repeats whe have in this country, there are never less than three murders per episode, four is not uncommon, even five or six murders if the writers are really trying. And it seems to me that at any given moment there is an episode of MM playing somewhere in the English speaking world. It really is John Nettles' retirement fund.

"Well there must be some reason Corrie is still at or near the top of British telly ratings"

Eight out of ten Britons never watch it.

There must be some reason why the overwhelming majority of us go and read a good book the moment that tune starts

Life's too short for keeping up with soaps. The scenes with the matriarch du jour coming out with quite outrageously quotable lines will usually appear on Youtube soon enough.

I'm sure I've seen spitting on hands to seal an agreement in cowboy movies. I've also seen it as a jokey act before lifting a heavy weight (years ago, in a production of The Dresser, the Ac-TOR central character playing Lear did it before hoisting his wife (playing Cordelia) for their final entrance).

It is not a common thing, only "common".

When I do business with my clients, I always insist that we spit on each others hands to seal the agreement. Only then can I be sure that the deal is agreed.

Oh yes, and occasionally we do the blood brothers thing that's in Cowboy and Indian westerns, but that cut across the palm hurts like hell.

From a BBC website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A20363267
Look in the section: Reasons for Shaking Hands.

I've only ever seen it done as a joke.

Eight out of ten Britons never watch it.>

But Flanner ain't Corrie still at or near the top of Brit TV rankings>

I cannot count the number of B&B Landladies who are Corrie addicts as they chuckle when I tell them I have to be back to watch tonight's episode, which though being ovre a year ahead of the Canuck version can rather ruin the suspense once back home.

It's the kind of thing my dad would have done...

I've not seen it in real life for years and years. But who's to say no-one still does it?

I'd say it's old-fashioned working-class.

It's in the same sort of category as clutching your braces while you kick up your heels, Dick Van Dyke style.

watching an antiques road show type programme on BBC2 early last evening one of the dealer guys there spat on his hands before doing a deal,not a real spit but a pretend one,so there must be folk out there doing it.
my mother would have given me one round the ear if she ever saw me spit for whatever reason when I was young and would still do it now if she could get out her wheelchair to reach me.