Birth with teeth in Shakespeare’s “Henry VI” and in European folklore

When you were born, the owl screamed,
Foretelling ill times, the horned owl wept,
Dogs howled, a hurricane tore down the trees,
An ominous raven settled on the chimney,
And a chorus of magpies chattered out of tune.
And your mother, though she suffered more
Than other mothers do, bore
Less joy to herself than she should have done,
A shapeless, ugly lump,
Unlike the fruit of such a tree.
You were born with teeth, as a sign
That you had come into the world to torment people.

Literal translation

With these words Henry addresses Gloucester in Part 3 of the drama “Henry VI”. In these lines Shakespeare alludes to omens from European folklore: an old tradition holds that children born with milk teeth are destined to wield great power. In the French language this superstition survives in an idiom about long teeth, denoting a thirst for power. Russian folklore promises babies born with natal teeth robust health and prosperity. But on the whole this is quite a rarity: only 1 baby in 2,500 comes into the world with teeth that erupted while he was still in the womb.