There is a quaint custom surrounding pregnancies in the Orkney Islands, in Northern Scotland.
Do you know: The baby-boys were always baptized before baby-girls, because the locals believed; if a girl was baptized first, she would grow a beard.
In the Orkney Islands, a pregnancy is usually kept a secret to keep the mother and the baby safe from ‘trows’ or supernatural creatures. A Bible and knives were placed under the mother’s bed and the unborn child’s room. Also, if the tip of a rainbow were ever seen falling over a house where a baby was to be born, then the locals believed the baby would be a boy.
