Belgian folk belief is highly local: records from Antwerp, Brabant and the Kempen preserve different omens from those collected in Wallonia, while Brussels has developed its own urban luck traditions. Historical Belgian folklore journals and the Musée de la Vie wallonne document beliefs involving weather signs, protective plants, healing trees, saint-days, household rituals and supernatural warnings. This collection records approximately 26 distinct Belgian superstitions and folk omens; many are historical or regional, and their presence in folklore does not mean that Belgian families today accept or practise them.
Late nineteenth-century Flemish collectors were already recording wangeloof, weather sayings and folk remedies as material tied to particular villages and provinces. Walloon ethnographers followed a similarly local approach, preserving beliefs and objects that might otherwise have disappeared. The Musée de la Vie wallonne continues to treat popular beliefs and superstitions as part of Wallonia’s ethnographic record.[1]
Brussels Luck and Walloon Protective Traditions
Rubbing Everard t’Serclaes for Good Luck
Beside Brussels’ Grand Place, the monument to Everard t’Serclaes has acquired a well-known luck ritual. Legend says that rubbing the reclining figure’s right arm brings good fortune. The custom is specifically associated with this Brussels monument rather than Belgium as a whole.[2]
Driving a Nail Into a Tree to Transfer Illness
Walloon folklore includes arbres à clous, or nail trees, to which illness was symbolically transferred. A traditional version involved bringing a nail into contact with an afflicted place and hammering it into a tree. The Musée de la Vie wallonne records surviving examples around Saint-Hadelin, Herchies, Han-sur-Lesse and Anthisnes.[3]
Leaving Cloth on a Rag Tree
A related Walloon tradition concerns arbres à loques, trees on which pieces of cloth or objects associated with an ailment were left as a form of ex-voto. The oak at Ostiches, near Ath, is among the examples recorded by the Musée de la Vie wallonne.
Kempen Plants, Thresholds, and Hidden Fortune
The White Cuckoo Orchid Against the Evil Hand
An Antwerp-Brabant folklore record describes tubers known as Witte Koekoek in the Kempen as protection against the kwade hand, or evil hand. They were associated with St John’s Night and placed beneath a doorway so the harmful influence was believed unable to cross the threshold.[4]
Gold at the End of a Horsetail Root
A belief recorded at Oostmalle concerned Peerdensteert, horsetail. Anyone capable of pulling the plant from the ground with its deepest final root intact was said to discover a gold ring or gold coin at the end. The tale turns the plant’s notoriously extensive roots into a test rewarded by hidden wealth.
Old Flemish Rituals for Warts and Ailments
Several practices collected under the heading Oud Wangeloof, or old superstition, treated illness as something that could be buried, transferred or carried away. These accounts are valuable as folklore records, but they are not medical treatments.
Burying Warts With Cemetery Earth
One recorded ritual instructed a person with warts to place the affected hand on cemetery ground after a burial, cover it with blessed earth and recite nine Hail Marys. The practice was explicitly known as “burying the warts,” symbolically transferring the condition into the ground.
Burying Bacon to Make Warts Disappear
Another old Antwerp-Brabant version involved rubbing a wart with a piece of bacon and burying the bacon. A descending sequence of prayers was then recited over nine days. As the buried bacon decayed, the wart was expected to disappear with it.
Holy Water Had to Come From a Strange Church
A wart remedy recorded by Flemish folklorists required dipping the affected hand into the holy-water font of a church away from home. The curious condition was essential to the belief: water from one’s own familiar church was said not to have the same effect.
A Gifted Horse Chestnut Carried Away Rheumatism
A historical Antwerp folk remedy called for carrying a wild chestnut in a pocket against rheumatic complaints. The chestnut was supposed to have been received as a gift rather than obtained for oneself. Once the ailment ended, the chestnut was to be buried.
Eel Skin as a Folk Remedy for Rheumatism
A Belgian folklore exhibition held in Brussels in the early twentieth century displayed eel skin among objects traditionally considered remedies for rheumatism. The exhibit brought together Flemish and Walloon collections, showing how material objects could acquire curative meaning in historical folk medicine.[5]
Coffin Nails Against Toothache
The same Belgian folklore exhibition preserved coffin nails that had been associated with relief from toothache. The belief belongs to a wider historical idea that an object connected with death or burial could absorb, remove or redirect an ailment. It is an ethnographic record, not dental advice.
Candlemas Protection in Brabant and Antwerp
Three Drops of Candlemas Wax for Protection
An old custom recorded in Brabant, Antwerp and the Kempen called for three drops from a blessed Candlemas candle to be placed behind the horns of cattle and in the hats or caps of household members. The practice joined a Christian feast day with a household form of folk protection.
Animal Signs and Weather Omens
A Cat Scratching the Broom Foretold Wind
Among weather signs collected in the Antwerp area, a cat scratching at the broom was treated as a warning that windy weather was coming. Such household observations turned familiar animal behaviour into forecasts long before formal weather reports became part of everyday life.
Cats and Toads Announced Rain or Snow
Toads croaking and cats washing behind their ears were recorded as signs of approaching rain. A cat settling with its back toward the fire carried another meaning: snow was expected. These were folk interpretations of animal behaviour rather than reliable forecasts.
What a Slug Carried Predicted the Weather
A small detail on a crawling slug or snail could become a weather omen. In one Flemish record, straw carried on its tail indicated dry weather, while earth clinging to it was interpreted as a sign that rain would follow.
Early-Roosting Chickens Promised Fine Weather
Chickens going to roost early were regarded as a favourable sign for the following day’s weather. If they stayed active unusually late, poor weather was expected instead. The omen is preserved among Flemish farming sayings collected alongside seasonal observations.[6]
An Insect in an Oak Gall Foretold Winter’s Length
An old rural prediction involved examining what was found inside an oak gall. A flying insect was associated with a winter that would pass quickly, while a worm was interpreted as a warning of a long winter that people would have to struggle through.
Abundant Acorns and Nuts Meant a Hard Winter
A heavy crop of acorns or nuts was taken as a sign that a severe winter lay ahead. The saying belongs to the old practice of reading seasonal abundance as a clue to future weather, although crop size does not provide a supernatural prediction of winter conditions.
A Windy Advent Promised Plenty of Fruit
One Flemish agricultural saying linked the weather during Advent with the following fruit crop. Frequent wind in the Advent period was interpreted as a promise of plentiful fruit, joining the church calendar to the farmer’s seasonal expectations.
Saint-Days and Calendar Weather Lore
Rain on St Medard Meant Six More Weeks
A recorded Flemish saying warned that rain on the feast of St Medard, or in another version St Margaret, would be followed by six weeks of rainy weather. The exact saint-day association could vary, a reminder that calendar lore was not perfectly uniform even within neighbouring regions.
Candlemas Sunshine Meant Six More Weeks of Cold
Candlemas, known in Dutch as Lichtmis, supplied several weather sayings. One Antwerp-Brabant rhyme stated that if the sun shone through the wood on Candlemas, another six weeks of cold weather would follow.
A Green Christmas Meant a White Easter
The concise saying “a green Christmas, a white Easter” appears in a Flemish collection of weather lore. A mild, snowless Christmas was therefore paired in folk prediction with wintry conditions around Easter.
Friday’s Weather Would Return on Sunday
Another short Antwerp-Brabant weather rule equated Friday’s conditions with those expected on Sunday. Like many traditional weather proverbs, the saying offered an easily remembered pattern rather than a dependable meteorological rule.
Death Signs and Supernatural Night Beliefs
A Falling Star Marked Someone’s Death
A Flemish folklore note recorded the belief that whenever a star appeared to fall from the sky, someone had just died. The collector also recognised the motif beyond Flanders, so it should be understood as a Belgian version of a wider European association between human lives and stars.
Stopping the Clock After a Death
An old Flemish record states that after a death in the household, cats were driven outside, the clock was stopped and the shutters were closed. These actions belonged to the ritual treatment of a house in mourning and should not be assumed to have survived unchanged in present-day Belgian families.
Bokkenrijders Flying as Wild Hunters
The historical Bokkenrijders, or Buckriders, acquired a supernatural afterlife in Belgian folk belief. A nineteenth-century Flemish collector noted that some people no longer imagined them simply as former criminals but as Wild Hunters flying high through the evening and night sky; other storytellers confused them with Freemasons.
Why Belgian Superstitions Are So Local
The records do not support treating “Belgian superstition” as one uniform tradition. Ons Volksleven described itself as an Antwerp-Brabant periodical devoted to language, folk poetry, old customs and superstition, and many of its observations identify places such as Antwerp, the Kempen, Oostmalle, Schelle or villages around Aarschot. On the French-speaking side, the journal Wallonia explicitly collected ethnography, customs, beliefs and superstitions from Walloon regions.
This local method continues in museum work. The Musée de la Vie wallonne was founded in Liège in 1913 to collect customs, traditions and beliefs, and later fieldwork included investigation of nail trees and rag trees at Stambruges. The result is a Belgian folklore record in which a belief may belong to one province, village or linguistic area rather than to the entire country.[7]
📚 Roots of Belief
- Musée de la Vie wallonne — Parcours — Describes the museum’s documentation of Walloon life, including popular beliefs and folklore from the nineteenth century onward. (The museum is operated by the Province of Liège and maintains major ethnographic collections concerning Wallonia.)
- Visit Flanders — The Story of Everard t’Serclaes — Records the Brussels legend that rubbing the statue’s right arm brings good luck. (Visit Flanders is the official tourism organisation for Flanders and documents Belgian cultural heritage and visitor sites.)
- Musée de la Vie wallonne — “Savez-vous planter des clous… à la mode de chez nous ?” — Documents Walloon nail trees and rag trees, the idea of transferring illness to a tree, and surviving examples at Saint-Hadelin, Herchies, Han-sur-Lesse, Anthisnes and Ostiches. (A Province of Liège museum source devoted to Walloon ethnography.)
- Ons Volksleven — Antwerp-Brabant Folklore Periodical — Preserves nineteenth-century Flemish records concerning the Witte Koekoek against the evil hand, Oostmalle horsetail treasure, wart rituals, Candlemas customs, folk remedies, weather omens, falling stars, mourning practices and Bokkenrijder beliefs. (A digitised historical folklore periodical preserved through an institutional archive collection.)
- Wallonia, Volume XI — Archives wallonnes historiques, ethnographiques, littéraires et artistiques — Reports a Brussels exhibition of Flemish and Walloon folklore that included eel skin for rheumatism and coffin nails for toothache among objects representing traditional medicine. (The historical journal published ethnographic and folklore research and received support from the Province of Liège.)
- Ons Volksleven — Full Digitised Text — Provides the original collected sequence of Antwerp-area weather predictions involving cats, toads, slugs, chickens, oak galls, nuts, Advent, saint-days, Candlemas, Christmas and weekly weather sayings. (The full-text institutional digitisation permits the historical folklore entries to be checked in their original sequence.)
- Université de Liège — Rendre compte de la société d’aujourd’hui — Explains the history and ethnographic work of the Musée de la Vie wallonne, including its collection of customs, traditions and beliefs and its field investigation of nail and rag trees at Stambruges. (Published through the University of Liège’s academic journal platform with a DOI and scholarly authorship.)