Seventh son of a seventh son

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This article is about the folklore concept. For the Iron Maiden album, see Seventh Son of a Seventh Son.

The seventh son of a seventh son is a concept from folklore regarding special powers given to, or held by, such a son. The seventh son must come from an unbroken line with no female children born between, and be, in turn, born to such a seventh son.[1] The number seven has a long history of mystical and religious associations: seven sleepers, seven-league boots, seven ages of man, seven hills of Rome, seven lucky gods of Japanese mythology, the Seven Sages, seven sisters, seven stars, seven wonders of the world, and so on. In this case, it refers to a man who is the seventh son of a man who is himself a seventh son.

In some beliefs, the special powers are inborn, inherited simply by virtue of his birth order; in others the powers are granted to him by God or gods because of his birth order.

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[edit] Regional variations

[edit] Ireland

The seventh son of a seventh son is gifted as a healer. There are several cases of an Irish healer in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Paul Joseph Cawley was a seventh son of a seventh son and was known in this Irish coal mining town for healing many skin diseases.

[edit] Pop culture references

[edit] Music

[edit] Television

  • In The Twilight Zone episode titled "Still Valley", the character Paradine receives a book of witchcraft from an old man claiming to be the seventh son of a seventh son as was the old man's father.
  • In the NBC soap opera Days of our Lives, the somewhat gothic and mystical international crime boss Stefano DiMera, who called himself "the Phoenix" and has "come back from the dead" (or rather, faked his death) countless times, has claimed to be the seventh son of a seventh son.
  • In the television series "The Storyteller" episode The Luck Child an evil king sets out to kill the seventh son of a seventh son who is prophesied to become king.

[edit] Literature

  • In the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, magical properties are attributed to the number eight rather than seven. Traditionally on the Discworld, an eighth son of an eighth son becomes a wizard. The eighth son of such a wizard would become a Sourcerer. In the novel "Equal Rites" a prophetic son is supposed to be born, but instead a daughter is born. The daughter then receives the wizarding powers normally given to the seventh son. This causes problems as females are supposed to be witches and males wizards. The powers associated with each title are not interchangeable as in other stories, and this causes the main plot of the novel.
  • In Susan Cooper's Arthurian fantasy sequence The Dark Is Rising, the main protagonist Will Stanton is the seventh son of a seventh son.
  • Orson Scott Card's novel series The Tales of Alvin Maker (Alvin is the seventh son of a seventh son).
  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison has a character named Wheatstraw who is the seventh son of a seventh son.
  • In the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage, Septimus Heap is the seventh son of a seventh son, and as such is an extremely gifted wizard.
  • In Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba's biological father is the seventh son of a seventh son.
  • Comic book superhero Johnny Thunder obtained his magical birthright by virtue of being the seventh son of a seventh son. He was also born at 7am on July 7 (the seventh day of the seventh month), 1917.
  • In The Last Apprentice series by Joseph Delaney, only a seventh son of a seventh son can become a Spook, the man who's in charge of ridding the countryside of witches, boggarts and other things that go bump in the night. Twelve-year-old Tom, the last apprentice, triumphs over various scary circumstances and hardships on his way to fulfilling his destiny as a Spook.
  • In Robert A. Heinlein's novel "I Will Fear No Evil", the protagonist, Johann Sebastian Bach Smith, at one point refers to himself as "the seventh son of a seventh son, born under a caul".
  • In The Penguins of Doom by Greg R. Fishbone, the main protagonist, Septina Nash, is the seventh child of two seventh children and has magical powers as a result.

[edit] Other

  • Seventh Son Virus - a computer virus affecting COM files, the words "seventh son of a seventh son" appear in infected files.[2]

[edit] Real-life seventh sons of seventh sons

[edit] References

  1. ^ Ten Thousand Wonderful Things, Edmund Fillingham King, p. 315.
  2. ^ Seventh son virus
  • Parman, Susan. "Curing Beliefs and Practices in the Outer Hebrides." Folklore, Vol. 88, No. 1 (1977), pp. 107-109.

[edit] External links