cross

   The many ways in which material representations of the cross, and the gesture of prayer and blessing called the Sign of the Cross, are used in official religious rituals need not be listed here. At the level of folk custom and belief, the cross functions as a powerful protection against evil, and hence as a way of ensuring luck. Children draw a cross on themselves with thumb or finger (generally licking it first) as a form of oath, saying 'Cross my heart and wish I may die!' To draw it on one's shoe is said to cure cramps, and revive a foot that has 'gone to sleep'; Coleridge recalled this from his schooldays, with the rhyme:

   Foot, foot, foot is fast asleep! Thumb, thumb, thumb in spittle we steep! Crosses three we make to ease us, Two for the thieves and one for Jesus!

   (Table Talk (1835), ii. 59)

   There are many references to marking bread-dough and cake mixtures with a cross before baking, to keep the Devil and witches away, so that they rise properly in cooking; other foods were sometimes protected in the same way. No witch could step over sticks or straws laid crossways, or enter through doors or chimneys where a cross had been carved; the symbol was therefore common on *witch posts and *threshold patterns.