Most of us will have heard the old nursery rhyme, “See a penny, pick it up; all day long you’ll have good luck!”
In fact, the rhyme was originally about pins, not pennies – and it was a lot more sinister: “See a pin, pick it up; all day long you’ll have good luck. See a pin and let it lie; you’ll feel want before you die.”
This superstition may well have come from an old English proverb that was popular in the mid-17th century: “He that will not stoop for a pin will never be worth a pound”. (Which is very similar to a saying that is still very popular today: “Take care of the pennies and the pounds will take care of themselves”.) It is one of many ancient sayings that teach us it is worth taking a little time and trouble over small things. The earliest written record of it was in the diaries of Samual Pepys in 1668.
People alive in the 1600s who used that saying would also have been scared to leave a pin on the ground due to the association of pins and witchcraft. It was widely believed that pins were used to fix spells in place – whether good or evil – binding spells to the people they were being cast upon. Folk believed that if you didn’t pick up the pin, a witch might use it in a spell against you.
Pins were also used in hexes that were performed to reverse bad spells. Many of the medical ailments that afflicted 17th century citizens were, at the time, believed to be the result of a spell being cast upon a person. Back in our September edition, I wrote about the hair and nail clippings of infants being placed into a “witch bottle” and held there by pins to ward off evil curses against the child. In much the same way, ailments such as urinary infections were ‘treated’ by placing a sample of the patient’s urine inside the “witch bottle” along with a pin – the pin being there to represent the victim’s pain.
The mixture was then boiled in order to transfer the pain back to the witch who had cast the spell in the first place. The bottles were either buried or bricked up in the walls of the person’s home to ward off any futures curses. These “witch bottles” were common place from the mid-16th century and throughout the 17th century and have been discovered by archaeologists beneath floorboards and in chimney breasts of houses that date back to that era.
The habit of picking up a pin had a practical use as well – pins are an essential tool for needlework which was a necessity, rather than a hobby, at that time.
The change from pin to penny in the nursery rhyme appears to have occurred in America in the early part of the 19th century. Some think it was simply a linguistic slip, whilst others believe it was the appearance of the words, “In God We Trust” on American pennies. For those who believed in God, finding a penny was thought to be a token of luck sent from the Good Lord.
These days, some believe that if the penny you find is ‘heads-up’ it signifies good luck, whilst if it is ‘tails-up’ it will bring bad luck. Also in more recent times, an additional line was added to the rhyme which tells: “Give that penny to a friend and your luck will never end”. (Incidentally, the IWD theme for 2026 is “when we give, we gain” which ties in nicely to the idea of giving away your found pennies! See page 14 for more information about IWD.)
Finding a penny is becoming rarer in the 21st century as fewer and fewer people use cash. However, if I am lucky enough to find one, I always give it away, either to another person (usually to one of my grandchildren for their piggy bank), or by putting it into a charity collection box. I may never become rich myself, but I feel that some good will have come from my lucky finds!
(And just to ‘prove the rule’, I once kept a lucky penny for myself and used it to scratch a National Lottery scratchcard… I didn’t win – I should have just given the penny away!)
