海外文化:英美民俗-打噴嚏

【英文原文】

To one who has just sneezed, people generally say, “God bless you.” In many European countries, sneezing is traditionally associated with death. Americans believe that one is very close to death when one sneezes, because sneezing can drive the soul from the head, or the life from the body. So to the sneezer they say, “God bless you”, as a charm against the danger of the moment. But some people have given more sensible explanations for the custom. They say it was St.Gregory who first said, “God bless you”, after others sneezed, because in his time there was a deadly disease, and sneezing was a sign that the sneezer might have caught the disease. Aristotle mentions a similar custom among the Greeks. One Greek writer tells us that sneezing was an important symptom of a disease that spread in Athens.

【中文譯文】

打噴嚏

對剛打過噴嚏的人，人們通常說：“上帝保佑你。“在歐美，打噴嚏意味著死到臨頭，因為過去有人以為打噴嚏會把靈魂從腦袋里打出去，或者把生命從身體里打出去。于是人們祝福一下，以化解危險。但還有一些解釋似乎更合理。有人說是教皇圣格列高利最先說這句祝福話的，他在世時正流行一種致命的疾病，打噴嚏是一個癥狀。亞里士多德也在著作中提到，希臘人就有向打噴嚏的人祝福的習俗。另一位古希臘作家寫道，雅典流行的一種疾病的重要癥狀就是打噴嚏。