Magpie Lore

 

When you a magpie , salute and wish them well along with their family 

Magpie lore

Some say that the medicine from a meaningful magpie encounter has to do with communication or creative expression.  

Others say that the magpie is a bridge between worlds asking us to open our minds to greater consciousness. 

The would be the traditional English folk rhyme about magpies, used for counting them and predicting good or bad luck. The most common version is:

One for sorrow,

Two for joy,

Three for a girl,

Four for a boy,

Five for silver,

Six for gold,

Seven for a secret never to be told,

Eight for a wish,

Nine for a kiss,

Ten for a bird you must not miss.

(There are many regional variations – sometimes “seven” is “a secret never to be told,” sometimes “a story never to be told,” and lines beyond ten change a lot, e.g., eleven for health, twelve for wealth, etc.)

A shorter, older version (especially in Yorkshire and the north) is simply:

One for sorrow, two for mirth,

Three for a wedding, four for a birth.

Magpies have long been seen as birds of omen in British and Irish folklore, which is why people still recite this when they spot them today. If you only see one magpie, tradition says you should salute it (or say “Good morning, Mr Magpie, how’s your wife?”) to ward off the sorrow!

The famous magpie counting rhyme (“One for sorrow, two for joy…”) is one of Britain’s best-known pieces of bird folklore, but its exact origins are murky and much debated. Here’s what historians and folklorists have pieced together:

Earliest Roots (pre-18th century)

•  Magpies have been regarded as birds of ill omen in Britain and much of Europe for centuries, largely because of their black-and-white plumage (associated with death and mourning), their bold scavenging behavior, and old Christian symbolism that painted them as proud, thieving birds (they supposedly refused to mourn at the Crucifixion or wear full mourning for Jesus).

•  In medieval and early modern times, seeing a single magpie was widely considered unlucky across England, Scotland, Ireland, and parts of continental Europe. People developed small rituals to counteract it: saluting the bird, spitting, raising your hat, or saying “Good morrow, Mr Magpie, how is your lady wife today?”

First Appearance of a Counting Rhyme (late 18th century)

•  The earliest known printed version of anything resembling the modern rhyme appears around 1780 in a supplement to John Brand’s Observations on Popular Antiquities (1777), recorded by a Lincolnshire corre

One’s sorrow, two’s mirth,

Three’s a wedding, four’s a birth,

Five’s a christening, six a death,

Seven’s heaven, eight is hell,

And nine’s the devil his old self.”

19th-Century Evolution

Throughout the 1800s the rhyme mutated rapidly in oral tradition and appeared in dozens of local variants in magazines, children’s books, and folklore collections. Key milestones:

•  1846 – A version very close to the modern one appears in Proverbs and Popular Sayings by Michael Aislabie Denham:

One for sorrow, two for mirth,

Three for a funeral, four for a birth…” etc

By the 1880s–1890s, the familiar “One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy…” sequence had largely standardized in southern and central England, helped by its inclusion in children’s books and magazines.

The “Girl/Boy” Lines – Surprisingly Recent

The lines “three for a girl, four for a boy” are absent from almost all pre-1840 versions. They seem to have become dominant only in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, possibly influenced by the popularity of similar counting rhymes for babies (like ladybugs or crows in other cultures).

20th-Century Spread and Variations

•  The rhyme exploded in popularity during and after World War I and II because soldiers and civilians used it superstitiously—spotting a lone magpie was taken as a bad omen, and saluting or reciting the rhyme became widespread.

•  During the 20th century, longer extensions (five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret…) were added in different regions. Some of these are genuinely old regional lines; others were invented by 20th-century children or writers.

Related European Traditions

Similar “counting bad-luck birds” superstitions exist elsewhere:

•  In Scotland and northern England, it was sometimes applied to crows or pies (an old word for magpie).

•  In France, the magpie rhyme is “Un pour la tristesse, deux pour la gaieté…” (very close to the English).

•  In parts of Sweden and the Netherlands, single magpies are also unlucky, but no full counting rhyme developed.

Summary of Origins

There is no single ancient source. Instead, the rhyme grew organically from a widespread medieval superstition that a lone magpie brought sorrow. Over the 18th and 19th centuries, people began attaching short rhyming couplets to larger flocks, and by the late Victorian era the version we know today had crystallized and spread nationwide.

So while it feels ancient, the familiar modern form (“One for sorrow, two for joy…”) is essentially a product of the 19th century, built on much older beliefs about the magpie as a bird of omen.

Contrary to popular belief, magpies are not witches — they’re just birds (corvids, closely related to crows, ravens, and jays). But the idea that they’re somehow linked to witchcraft is very deeply rooted in European folklore, and that’s why the question keeps popping up.

Here are the main historical reasons people made the connection:

Medieval Christian symbolism

•  Magpies were said to be the only birds that refused to wear full black mourning after the Crucifixion or wouldn’t enter Noah’s Ark properly. Church writers called them “the Devil’s bird.”

•  Their habit of collecting shiny objects was interpreted as greed or vanity — classic “witchy” traits in medieval eyes.

Witches’ familiars

•  In English and Scottish witch trials (16th–17th centuries), magpies turn up surprisingly often as accused witches’ familiars or “imps.”

•  Example: In the 1618 Samlesbury witch trial (Lancashire), one of the accused was said to turn into a magpie.

•  In East Anglia, several 17th-century trials mention black-and-white birds (often magpies) that flew to the witch and sucked blood from a teat hidden on her body.

Shape-shifting beliefs

•  In parts of northern England, Scotland, and Ireland there were persistent stories that witches could transform into magpies (sometimes hares or black cats too).

•  If a lone magpie suddenly appeared near a house, people would sometimes say “That’s a witch spying on us.”

The “half-mourning” plumage

•  Their black-and-white feathers were seen as neither fully good nor fully evil — “half in mourning, half out,” which made them liminal creatures, perfect go-betweens for the spirit world.

  

Modern echoes

•  Even today in rural parts of Britain you’ll occasionally hear older people say “That’s no ordinary magpie” or joke that a bold one hanging around the garden is a witch keeping an eye on things.

So while magpies are 100% ordinary (and very clever) birds, centuries of folklore have given them a genuine reputation as the “witch’s bird” in British and Irish culture. That’s why the superstition lingers — and why seeing one alone still makes some people instinctively salute or cross their fingers!