The giving of presents is riddled with risk for the superstitious, since it’s one of the few occasions when our own actions have a direct impact on others for good or ill. According to folklore, an empty wallet or purse received as a gift will stay empty forever, so to give one is akin to cursing the recipient with a lifetime of poverty. The belief is thought to stem from the notion that the Devil would inhabit an empty purse and use poverty to drive people to acts of desperation such as theft, deceit and prostitution that were regarded as ungodly and sinful.
The superstition was strengthened by its association with a saying that dates back to at least the early eighteenth century, which states ‘An empty purse is the Devil.’ The phrase was in popular use in Britain and America throughout the 1800s and can be found in print in an essay written by the pre-eminent American lexicographer Noah Webster, Jr. in 1786 lamenting the weakness of the federal government: ‘It prevents the adoption of any measures that are requisite for us as a nation; it keeps us from paying our honest debts . . . It also throws out of our power all the profits of commerce, and this drains us of cash. Is not this the devil? Yes, my countryman, an empty purse is the devil.’
The same phrase appeared in an 1882 edition of Notes and Queries, a scholarly magazine devoted to the exploration of the English language, history and antiquarianism, and we still use a version of it today. ‘The Devil Danced in Empty Pockets’ is the title of a song by contemporary American country singer Joe Diffie, and the same line appears in Tom Waits’s murder ballad ‘Lucinda’.
To guard against the curse of the empty purse, it was customary from the 1800s onwards to keep at least one coin in a wallet, or, if that had to be spent, a piece of string or twine could be used to trick the Devil into keeping out. Many people still slip a coin, or, if they’re in a generous mood, a note, inside a purse or wallet if it’s to be a gift.