skir-handed

Gammerstang commented on the word skir-handed

(adjective) - Skir, or kir-handed people, left-handed ones, are not safe for a traveller to meet on a Tuesday morning. On other days it is fortunate to meet them. If you enter another man's house with your skir foot foremost, you draw down evil upon its inhabitants. If, therefore, you have carelessly done so, you must avert the mischief by going out and making your entrance a second time with the right foot. I conclude that this little superstition once held its ground in the South, for Dr. Samuel Johnson is said to have entertained it, and to have left a house and re-entered it right foot foremost if on the first occasion he had planted his left foot on the threshold.

--William Henderson's Folklore of the Northern Counties of England, 1879

January 26, 2018