Yes! The fascination of the seventh son of a seventh son! Is it more than folklore? More than the 1988 Iron Maiden album that stemmed from the folklore? I suspect there may have been more seventh sons born last century than this, but still, it conjures powerful visions of mystical or even biblical significance, doesn’t it? According to Wikipedia, it can go so far as to be broken down by regions:
- Ireland – believed to be a healer
- France – believed to have curative properties
- Latin America – believed to be a werewolf
- Italy – believed to be a charmer of snakes
- U.S. – believed to garner riches
Well, that last was borne of a book written in the year 1807-08 by Edward Kendall regarding his visit to the Newgate copper mine. Indeed, a radio drama aired in 1980 on the CBS Mystery Theatre called “The Iron Horse” by Sam Dann played off that account of mining discoveries. Jimmy Stewart starred in a 1940 movie called “The Philladelphia Story” that noted the legend and as recently as 2014 the fantasy-adventure film Seventh Son has as the main character a seventh son of a seventh son that featured Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore. (Gees, never heard of it!)
To be authentically a seventh son of a seventh son, however, there must not be a female sibling separating the numbers. (Therefore, singer Perry Como could not legitimately claim the distinction. Lyle Lewis Aley, radio announcer was an unproven seventh, and Len Dawson, quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs claimed the distinction without acknowledging where his dad stood in the family line. Como, however, could make musical magic with the best of them.)
Still, there are many books written that include the folklore theme as a plot–all fiction in the fantasy or science fiction genres, so who is to say it may or may not magically bestow super-human properties, cause I could find no non-fiction references.
Several popularly noted fiction books with the theme include:
- I will Fear No Evil by Robert A Heinlein, 1987
- Seventh Son (Tales of the Alvin Maker Book 1) by Orson Scott Card 1993
- Septimus Heap (#1) series by Angie Sage 2014
And, of course, the granddaddy, blockbuster of them all–the Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowlings, including Deathly Hallows (#7) 2009, which includes the 7th child of the 7th child (Ginny Weasley), a girl! (And the females have magical powers of their own.) These books were written for the 9-12 years age group. That’s fine–it got ALL ages to reading again!
- And if you really want to have some goosebumps, try Comic book superhero Johnny Thunder who obtained his magical birthright by virtue of being the seventh son of a seventh son and was also born at 7 am on July 7 (the seventh day of the seventh month), 1917. Unfortunately, it didn’t have quite the fire of the Potter series.
With all the time and research, however, I was not able to find one non-fictional account of a real seventh son biography, memoir, or story. Still, we do love our folklore and stories handed down and wonder how the stories got started. If you’ve come across some true accounts, I’d love to hear them!
©2018 V Williams (Photo attribution for title pic: Pexels, Theatrical poster for Seventh Son from Wikipedia)
Rosepoint Publishing 
Ahhh… Very interesting… And I can see why they wouldn’t be all the common. The precluding of those with female sibling in between… intriguing.
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Yeah, a common theme, but then could find nothing to back it up.
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Pity. It still good food for thought!
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There is such a popularity of the super human concept, guess it’s easy to assign something to that as really, it’s very rare.
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I know what you mean.
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Intriguing that there don’t seem to be any documented real-life cases. You’d think, given how many children people used to have back before contraception, there’d have been a few at least…
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Yes that’s what I thought, but could find nothing in a chronicle or memoir. Reports like my dad or my grandad was, but no real stories. I was surprised.
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I had three warts one on my elbow and one on each hand from birth. When I was 13yrs old my parents were going to take me to the Dr to have them removed. A lady that worked with my mom heard about this and told her she had a great uncle that was a seventh son of a seventh son and that he could take them away without having to go to a doctor and having them removed just by rubbing on them. My mom agreed to give it a shot and we went to the guy’s house we went to his kitchen table he pulled out of pocket knife and opened it up and asked for my hand and my mom freaked out and said let’s go the lady her friend calmed her down and said it would be okay he rubbed the park at knife over each my warts and talked in some kind of tongue or something that I couldn’t understand when he was done he told me to leave them alone for 3 days to not bother them don’t be picking at them or anything and he said on the third day they would be gone I woke up on the third morning and they were gone and never came back I remember his name was Sam
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Whoa. I love stories like that. Amazing, huh? Thanks for sharing!
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