thirteen

   In medieval England, thirteen was not ill-omened. It was associated either with the 'extra' item customarily added to the dozen when selling certain produce, for example buns or eggs (hence 'baker's dozen'); or with groups of twelve-plus-a-leader, modelled on Christ and the Apostles. By the end of the 17th century, a belief had developed that if thirteen people sat down to a meal together, this meant one of them would die within a year; the first known reference is in The Athenian Mercury for June 1695, in an anecdote about a lady who was warned by the ghost of a friend that she would shortly die in these circumstances (reprinted by the editor of Aubrey's Miscellanies in 1857, pp. 207-8). The explanation suggested, both then and now, is that at the Last Supper one of the thirteen present, *Judas Iscariot, was the first to leave the table and killed himself soon afterwards. From the 1890s onwards, thirteen was considered unlucky in various other contexts, for example as the number of a hotel room or a house; as the belief grew stronger in the 20th century, such items were often renumbered as '12A' or omitted entirely. *Friday the thirteenth came to be particularly dreaded. Further explanations now sometimes offered are that there are thirteen witches in a *coven, and that the Death card is the thirteenth tarot trump. However, there is a counter-belief that thirteen is 'lucky for some' in bingo and other games of chance. Opie and Tatem, 1989: 197-9.