Superstitious? Not Me, Touch Wood

My mother was incredibly superstitious. She was always throwing the salt on his back, crossing his fingers or the hand spells for luck. Particularly strong in my mind are two rhymes that would have said out loud whenever the occasion demanded. The first was seeing a pin drop, "See a pin and pick it up and all day you will have good luck .. This had to be said in haste because apparently you were not breathing while bending down to pick up the pin and singing the rhyme. As I was able to determine, the days when my mother was lucky to find a pin How many were not lucky. Save for the discovery of the pin is. In my opinion, the verse would have been more accurate if it went like this: "See a pin and pick it up and all day you will have a pin." It would have been much more sense.

I remember the second verse is sung every time my mother saw a white horse. The verse was usually sung aloud again, who was present, while wetting a finger and drag in the form of a cross on a shoe. The verse went like this: "white horse, black horse, bring me luck, today or tomorrow I'll pick something up." The "something" in the verse was non-specific, probably referring to a pin. Or that a virus or lick your fingers dirty.

I'm not superstitious, but I do routinely count the magpies, when they gather in the field outside my window, mentally running through the song from the 1970 program of their children as I count. I say that the number of magpies can not affect my life how it will end, but I can not help it. It is a compulsion that I have obviously taken from my mother.

The problem here is that I am a bit 'confused about the rules for counting the magpies. Do you count the magpies seen in one sitting, so to speak? Or is the method of collection? You tot up all the magpies is detected in a day? I can not find it anywhere on the internet that explains this. And as the rhyme is to be interpreted? One and Two are quite explicit, as well as three and four if you know someone who is pregnant. But five for silver? I'll have to find some small change - or come second in an Olympic event? This is a great range.

However I see a lot of magpies, and whatever method I choose to count it, my luck never seems to change. To be honest I had a pretty cruddy time of it lately so maybe it's supposed to count in binary ...

1 for pain, 1 for pain, 1 for the pain ...