Confession: pagan post-apocalyptic fiction is one of my guilty pleasures. You know: civilization as we know it falls apart and it's up to the witches to rebuild. There's a surprising amount of it (for a sub-genre of a sub-genre of a sub-genre), and it offers us as a community a way to reflect on what a pagan future might look like.
I'm currently reading the latest installment in what is surely the most successful of the entire franchise: S. M. Stirling's Dies the Fire series. (Premise: on All Snakes' Day—March 17—1999 all the machines stop. Everything falls apart. The witches—among others—rebuild.) Ignore the title-by-Disney (The Golden Princess, wince. Not to mention the cover art: not just cheese, but stinky cheese. It's hard to be reading a book I'm ashamed to be seen with in public); as popular fiction goes, this is actually well-written, nicely-observed, and thoughtful stuff (on which, more in the future).
Our story so far: It's 2044. Our three principles have been having the same dream for the past three nights. One remarks, as if citing a quotation known to them all, “Once is coincidence, twice can be happenstance....” and her friend finishes, “The third time is either enemy action, or someone sending you a message” (245).
This strikes me as being a pretty sensible approach to omens. I thought I'd recast it in folk-proverb form, since a society which took the reading of signs seriously would certainly have such things in its oral literature. Folk expressions tend to be held together by rhyme or alliteration, and to preserve archaic diction. (Think of Mother Goose.) What might such a saying look like if it had been current in the English-speaking world since, oh, say 1500 or so?
Once as may be,
twice for hap;
thrice for a foe,
or tidings in your lap.
The things some people do for fun. Sigh.
S. M. Stirling, The Golden Princess (2014). New York: Roc.