may thus be profitably compared with the darker superstitions of St.
Mark’s Eve, the Baal fires, and compacts with the evil one, which so
constantly recur throughout the Northern mythologies. But there are
times and festivities when the serious Northern temperament relaxes;
and any one who has the least acquaintance with the wealth of folk-lore
which recent years have shown the natives of Great Britain that
they possess, well knows that the times of courtship and marriage
are two occasions when this lighter vein of our composite nature is
conspicuous. The collection of these old-world beliefs amongst our
peasantry did not begin a moment too soon. Day by day the remnants of
them are fast fading from the national memory. The disenchanting wand
of the modern schoolmaster, the rationalistic influences of the press,
the Procrustes-like system of standards in our parish schools—these
act like the breath of morn or the crowing of a cock upon ghosts, and
at once put charms, spells, and the like to flight. Before the nation
assumes the sober hues of pure reason and unpitying logic, in lieu of
the picturesque scraps of folk-lore and old-wifish beliefs in which
imagination was wont to clothe it, no office can be more grateful to
posterity than for enthusiastic inquirers to search out and put on
record these notes of fairy music which our villagers used to listen
to with such content. By way of giving a sample of their linked
sweetnesses long drawn out through so many generations of country
dwellers—of which the echoes still vibrate, especially in the north
and west of the country—it is our purpose to quote something of the
legendary lore connected with love and marriage. This must interest
everybody. Even the most determined old bachelor probably fell once, at
least, in love to enable him to discover the hollowness of the passion;
and as for the other sex, they may very conveniently, if illogically,
be classed here as they used to be at the Oxford Commemoration, the
married, the unmarried, and those who wish to be married. Some of these
spells and charms possess associations for each of these divisions, and
we are consequently sure of the suffrages of the fair sex.
Folk-lore, like Venus herself, has indeed specially flung her cestus
over “the palmer in love’s eye.” She has more charms to soothe his
melancholy than were ever prescribed by Burton. She is not above
dabbling in spells and the unholy mysteries of the black art to
inform him who shall be his partner for life. When sleep at length
seals his eyes, she waits at his bedside next morning to tell him the
meaning of his dreams. And most certainly the weaker sex has not been
forgotten by folk-lore, which, in proportion to their easier powers of
belief, provides them with infinite store of solace and prediction.
Milkmaids, country lasses, and secluded dwellers in whitewashed farm or
thick-walled ancestral grange are her particular charge. The Juliets
and Amandas of higher rank already possess enough nurses, confidantes,
and bosom friends, to say nothing of the poets and novelists. Perhaps
it would be well for them if they never resorted to more dangerous
mentors than do their rustic sisters when they listen to old wives’
wisdom at the chimney corner. Yet an exception must be made in favor
of some lovers of rank, when we recall the ludicrously simple wooing
of Mr. Carteret and Lady Jemima Montagu, and how mightily they were
indebted to the good offices of the more skilled Samuel Pepys, who
literally taught them when they ought to take each other’s hand, “make
these and these compliments,” and the like; “he being the most awkerd
man I ever met with in my life as to that business,” as the garrulous
diarist adds. For ourselves, we do not profess to be love casuists, and
the profusion of receipts which the subject possesses is so remarkable
that we shall be unable to preserve much order in our prescriptions.
Like those little books which possess wisdom for all who look within
them, we can only promise our readers a peep into a budget fresh from
fairy-land, and each may select what spell he or she chooses. Autolycus
himself did not open a pack stuffed with greater attractions for his
customers, especially for the fair sex.
Nothing is easier than to dream of a sweetheart. Only put a piece of
wedding-cake under your pillow, and your wish will be gratified. If you
are in doubt between two or three lovers, which you should choose, let
a friend write their names on the paper in which the cake is wrapped,
sleep on it yourself as before for three consecutive nights, and if you
should then happen to dream of one of the names therein written, you
are certain to marry him.[5] In Hull, folk-lore somewhat varies the
receipt. Take the blade-bone of a rabbit, stick nine pins in it, and
then put it under your pillow, when you will be sure to see the object
of your affections. At Burnley, during a marriage-feast, a wedding-ring
is put into the posset, and after serving it out the unmarried person
whose cup contains the ring will be the first of the company to be
married. Sometimes, too, a cake is made into which a wedding-ring and
a sixpence are put. When the company are about to retire, the cake is
broken and distributed among the unmarried ladies. She who finds the
ring in her portion of cake will shortly be married, but she who gets
the sixpence will infallibly die an old maid.
Perhaps your affections are still disengaged, but you wish to bestow
them on one who will return like for like. In this case there are
plenty of wishing-chairs, wishing-gates, and so forth, scattered
through the country. A wish breathed near them, and kept secret, will
sooner or later have its fulfilment. But there is no need to travel
to the Lake country or to Finchale Priory, near Durham (where is a
wishing-chair); if you see a piece of old iron or a horseshoe on your
path, take it up, spit on it, and throw it over your left shoulder,
framing a wish at the same time. Keep this wish a secret, and it will
come to pass in due time. If you meet a piebald horse, nothing can be
more lucky; utter your wish, and whatever it may be you will have it
before the week be out. In Cleveland, the following method of divining
whether a girl will be married or not is resorted to. Take a tumbler
of water from a stream which runs southward; borrow the wedding-ring
of some gudewife and suspend it by a hair of your head over the glass
of water, holding the hair between the finger and thumb. If the ring
hit against the side of the glass, the holder will die an old maid;
if it turn quickly round, she will be married once; if slowly, twice.
Should the ring strike the side of the glass more than three times
after the holder has pronounced the name of her lover, there will be
a lengthy courtship and nothing more; “she will be courted to dead,”
as they say in Lincolnshire; if less frequently, the affair will be
broken off, and if there is no striking at all it will never come
on.[6] Or if you look at the first new moon of the year through a silk
handkerchief which has never been washed, as many moons as you see
through it (the threads multiplying the vision), so many years must
pass before your marriage. Would you ascertain the color of your future
husband’s hair? Follow the practice of the German girls. Between the
hours of eleven and twelve at night on St. Andrew’s Eve a maiden must
stand at the house door, take hold of the latch, and say three times,
“Gentle love, if thou lovest me, show thyself,” She must then open the
door quickly, and make a rapid grasp through it into the darkness, when
she will find in her hand a lock of her future husband’s hair. The
“Universal Fortune-teller” prescribes a still more fearsome receipt for
obtaining an actual sight of him. The girl must take a willow branch
in her left hand, and, without being observed, slip out of the house
and run three times round it, whispering the while, “He that is to be
my goodman, come and grip the end of it.” During the third circuit
the likeness of the future husband will appear and grasp the other
end of the wand. Would any one conciliate a lover’s affections? There
is a charm of much simplicity, and yet of such potency that it will
even reconcile man and wife. Inside a frog is a certain crooked bone,
which when cleaned and dried over the fire on St. John’s Eve, and then
ground fine and given in food to the lover, will at once win his love
for the administerer.[7] A timely hint may here be given to any one
going courting: be sure when leaving home to spit in your right shoe
would you speed in your wooing. If you accidentally put on your left
stocking, too, inside out, nothing but good luck can ensue.
Among natural objects, the folk lore of the north invariably assigns a
speedy marriage to the sight of three magpies together. If a cricket
sings on the hearth, it portends that riches will fall to the hearer’s
lot. Catch a ladybird, and suffer it to fly out of your hands while
repeating the following couplet—
Fly away east, or fly away west,
But show me where lies the one I like best,
and its flight will furnish some clue to the direction in which your
sweetheart lies. Should a red rose bloom early in the garden, it is a
sure token of an early marriage. In Scotch folk-lore the rose possesses
much virtue. If a girl has several lovers, and wishes to know which
of them will be her husband, she takes a rose-leaf for each of them,
and naming each leaf after the name of one of her lovers, watches them
float down a stream till one after another they sink, when the last
to disappear will be her future husband.[8] A four-leaved clover will
preserve her from any deceit on his part, should she be fortunate
enough to find that plant; while there is no end to the virtues of an
even ash-leaf. We recount some of its merits from an old collection of
northern superstitions,[9] trusting they are better than the verses
which detail them.
The even ash-leaf in my left hand,
The first man I meet shall be my husband.
The even ash-leaf in my glove,
The first I meet shall be my love.
The even ash-leaf in my breast,
The first man I meet’s whom I love best.
Even ash, even ash, I pluck thee,
This night my true love for to see.
Find even ash or four-leaved clover,
An’ you’ll see your true love before the day’s over.
The color in which a girl dresses is important, not only during
courtship, but after marriage.
Those dressed in blue
Have lovers true;
In green and white
Forsaken quite.
Green, being sacred to the fairies, is a most unlucky hue. The “little
folk” will undoubtedly resent the insult should any one dress in their
color. Mr. Henderson[10] has known mothers in the south of England
absolutely forbid it to their daughters, and avoid it in the furniture
of their houses. Peter Bell’s sixth wife could not have been more
inauspiciously dressed when she—
Put on her gown of green,
To leave her mother at sixteen,
And follow Peter Bell.
And nothing green must make its appearance at a Scotch wedding.
Kale and other green vegetables are rigidly excluded from the
wedding-dinner. Jealousy has ever green eyes, and green grows the grass
on Love’s grave.
Some omens may be obtained by the single at a wedding-feast. The bride
in the North Country cuts a cheese (as in more fashionable regions she
is the first to help the wedding-cake), and he who can secure the first
piece that she cuts will insure happiness in his married life. If the
“best man” does not secure the knife he will indeed be unfortunate. The
maidens try to possess themselves of a “shaping” of the wedding-dress
for use in certain divinations concerning their future husbands.[11]
In all ages and all parts of our island maidens have resorted to omens
drawn from flowers respecting their sweethearts. Holly, ribwort,
plantain, black centaury, yarrow, and a multitude more possess a great
reputation in love matters. The lover must generally sleep on some
one of these and repeat a charm, when pleasant dreams and faithful
indications of a suitor will follow. “The last summer, on the day of
St. John the Baptist, 1694,” says Aubrey, “I accidentally was walking
in the pasture behind Montague House; it was twelve o’clock. I saw
there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well
habited, on their knees very busy, as if they had been weeding. I could
not presently learn what the matter was; at last a young man told me
that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put
under their head that night, and they should dream who would be their
husbands. It was to be sought for that day and hour.”[12]
But the day of all others sacred to these mystic rites was ever the
eve of St. Agnes (January 20), when maidens fasted and then watched
for a sign. A passage in the office for St. Agnes’s Day in the Sarum
Missal may have given rise to this custom: “Hæc est virgo sapiens quam
Dominus _vigilantem_ invenit;” and the Gospel is the Parable of the
Virgins.[13] Ben Jonson alludes to the custom:—
On sweet St. Agnes’ night
Please you with the promised sight,
Some of husbands, some of lovers,
Which an empty dream discovers.
And a character in “Cupid’s Whirligig” (1616) says, “I could find in
my heart to pray nine times to the moone, and fast three St. Agnes’s
Eves, so that I might bee sure to have him to my husband.” Aubrey gives
two receipts to the ladies for that eve, which may still be useful.
Take a row of pins and pull out every one, one after another, saying a
Paternoster, and sticking a pin in your sleeve, and you will dream of
him you shall marry. Again, “you must lie in another country, and knit
the left garter about the right-legged stocking (let the other garter
and stocking alone), and as you rehearse these following verses, at
every comma knit a knot:—
This knot I knit,
To know the thing, I know not yet,
That I may see,
The man that shall my husband be,
How he goes, and what he wears,
And what he does, all days and years.
Accordingly in your dream you will see him; if a musician, with a lute
or other instrument; if a scholar, with a book or papers;” and he adds
a little encouragement to use this device in the following anecdote.
“A gentlewoman that I knew, confessed in my hearing that she used this
method, and dreamt of her husband whom she had never seen. About two
or three years after, as she was on Sunday at church (at our Lady’s
Church in Sarum), up pops a young Oxonian in the pulpit; she cries out
presently to her sister, ‘This is the very face of the man that I saw
in my dream. Sir William Soame’s lady did the like.’” It is hardly
needful to remind readers of Keats’s “Eve of St. Agnes,” and the story
of Madeline,—
Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,
On love, and wing’d St. Agnes’ saintly care,
As she had heard old dames full many times declare.
Our ancestors made merry in a similar fashion on St. Valentine’s Day.
So Herrick, speaking of a bride, says,—
She must no more a-maying,
Or by rosebuds divine
Who’ll be her Valentine.
Brand, who helps us to this quotation, gives an amusing extract from
the _Connoisseur_ to the same effect. “Last Friday was Valentine’s Day,
and the night before I got five bay leaves, and pinned four of them
to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle; and
then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Betty said we should be married
before the year was out. But to make it more sure, I boiled an egg
hard, and took out the yolk and filled it with salt, and when I went
to bed, eat it, shell and all, without speaking or drinking after it.
We also wrote our lovers’ names upon bits of paper, and rolled them up
in clay, and put them into water, and the first that rose up was to be
our Valentine. Would you think it? Mr. Blossom was my man. I lay abed
and shut my eyes all the morning till he came to our house; for I would
not have seen another man before him for all the world.” The moon, “the
lady moon,” has frequently been called into council about husbands from
the time when she first lost her own heart to Endymion, the beautiful
shepherd of Mount Latmos. Go out when the first new moon of the year
first appears, and standing over the spars of a gate or stile, look on
the moon and repeat as follows:—
All hail to thee, moon! all hail to thee!
Prythee, good moon, reveal to me
This night who my husband shall be.
You will certainly dream that night of your future husband. It is very
important, too, that if you have a cat in the house, it should be a
black one. A North Country rhyme says—
Whenever the cat or the house is black,
The lasses o’ lovers will have no lack.
And an old woman in the north, adds Mr. Henderson,[14] said lately
in accordance with this belief to a lady, “It’s na wonder Jock ——’s
lasses marry off so fast, ye ken what a braw black cat they’ve got.”
It is still more lucky if such a cat comes of its own accord, and
takes up its residence in any house. The same gentleman gives an
excellent receipt to bring lovers to the house, which was communicated
to him by Canon Raine, and was gathered from the conversation of two
maid-servants. One of them, it seems, peeped out of curiosity into the
box of her fellow servant, and was astonished to find there the end
of a tallow candle stuck through and through with pins. “What’s that,
Molly,” said Bessie, “that I seed i’ thy box?” “Oh,” said Molly, “it’s
to bring my sweetheart. Thou seest, sometimes he’s slow a coming, and
if I stick a candle case full o’ pins it always fetches him.” A member
of the family certified that John was thus duly fetched from his abode,
a distance of six miles, and pretty often too.
Some of the most famous divinations about marriage are practised with
hazel-nuts on Allhallowe’en. In Indo-European tradition the hazel was
sacred to love; and when Loki in the form of a falcon rescued Idhunn,
the goddess of youthful life, from the power of the frost-giants, he
carried her off in his beak in the shape of a hazel-nut.[15] So in
Denmark, as in ancient Rome, nuts are scattered at a marriage. In
northern divinations on Allhallowe’en nuts are placed on the bars of
a grate by pairs, which have first been named after a pair of lovers,
and according to the result, their combustion, explosion, and the like,
the wise divine the fortune of the lovers. Graydon has beautifully
versified this superstition:—
These glowing nuts are emblems true
Of what in human life we view;
The ill-matched couple fret and fume,
And thus in strife themselves consume;
Or from each other wildly start,
And with a noise for ever part.
But see the happy, happy pair,
Of genuine love and truth sincere;
With mutual fondness, while they burn,
Still to each other kindly turn;
And as the vital sparks decay,
Together gently sink away;
Till, life’s fierce ordeal being past,
Their mingled ashes rest at last.[16]
Nevertheless modes of love-divination for this special evening, which
is as propitious to lovers as Valentine’s Day, may be found in Brand,
and other collectors of these old customs.
Peas are also sacred to Freya, almost vying with the mistletoe in
alleged virtue for lovers. In one district of Bohemia the girls go
into a field of peas, and make there a garland of five or seven kinds
of flowers (the goddess of love delights in uneven numbers), all of
different hues. This garland they must sleep upon, lying with their
right ear upon it, and then they hear a voice from underground, which
tells what manner of men they will have for husbands. Sweet-peas
would doubtless prove very effectual in this kind of divination, and
there need be no difficulty in finding them of different hues. If
Hertfordshire girls are lucky enough to find a pod containing nine
peas, they lay it under a gate, and believe they will have for husband
the first man that passes through. On the Borders unlucky lads and
lasses in courtship are rubbed down with pea straw by friends of the
opposite sex. These beliefs connected with peas are very widespread.
Touchstone, it will be remembered, gave two peas to Jane Smile, saying,
“with weeping tears, ‘Wear these for my sake.’”[17]
In Scotland on Shrove Tuesday a national dish called “crowdie,”
composed of oatmeal and water with milk, is largely consumed, and
lovers can always tell their chances of being married by putting into
the porringer a ring. The finder of this in his or her portion will
without fail be married sooner than any one else in the company.
Onions, curiously enough, figure in many superstitions connected with
marriage—why, we have no idea. It might be ungallantly suggested that
it is from their supposed virtue to produce tears, or from wearing many
faces, as it were, under one hood. While speaking of these unsavory
vegetables, we are reminded of a passage in Luther’s “Table Talk”:
“Upon the eve of Christmas Day the women run about and strike a swinish
hour” (whatever this may mean): “if a great hog grunts, it decides
that the future husband will be an old man; if a small one, a young
man,”[18] The orpine is another magical plant in love incantations. It
must be used on Midsummer Eve, and is useful to inform a maiden whether
her lover is true or false. It must be stuck up in her room, and the
desired information is obtained by watching whether it bends to the
right or the left. Hemp-seed, sown on that evening, also possesses
marvellous efficacy. One of the young ladies mentioned above, who sewed
bay leaves on her pillow, and had the felicity of seeing Mr. Blossom
in consequence, writes, “The same night, exactly at twelve o’clock,
I planted hemp-seed in our back yard, and said to myself, ‘Hemp seed
I sow, hemp-seed I hoe, and he that is my true love come after me
and mow!’ Will you believe it? I looked back and saw him behind me,
as plain as eyes could see him.” And she adds, as another wrinkle to
her sex, “Our maid Betty tells me that if I go backwards, without
speaking a word, into the garden upon Midsummer Eve, and gather a
rose and keep it in a clean sheet of paper without looking at it till
Christmas Day, it will be as fresh as in June; and if I then stick it
in my bosom, he that is to be my husband will come and take it out.”
Whatever be the virtue of Betty’s recipe, it would at all events teach
a lover patience. Mr. Henderson supplies two timely cautions from
Border folk-lore. A girl can “scarcely do a worse thing than boil a
dish-clout in her crock.” She will be sure, in consequence, to lose all
her lovers, or, in Scotch phrase, “boil all her lads awa’;” “and in
Durham it is believed that if you put milk in your tea before sugar,
you lose your sweetheart,”[19] We may add that unless a girl fasts
on St. Catherine’s Day (Nov. 25) she will never have a good husband.
Nothing can be luckier for either bachelor or girl than to be placed
inadvertently at some social gathering between a man and his wife. The
person so seated will be married before the year is out.
Song, play, and sonnet[20] have diffused far and wide the custom
of blowing off the petals of a flower, saying the while, “He loves
me—loves me not.” When this important business has been settled in
the affirmative a hint may be useful for the lover going courting. If
he meets a hare, he must at once turn back. Nothing can well be more
unlucky. Witches are found of that shape, and he will certainly be
crossed in love. Experts say that after the next meal has been eaten
the evil influence is expended, and the lover can again hie forth in
safety. In making presents to each other the happy pair must remember
on no account to give each other a knife or a pair of scissors. Such a
present effectually cuts love asunder. Take care, too, not to fall in
love with one the initial of whose surname is the same as yours. It is
quite certain that the union of such cannot be happy. This love-secret
has been reduced into rhyme for the benefit of treacherous memories:—
To change the name and not the letter,
Is a change for the worse, and not for the better.
This love-lore belongs to the Northern mythology, else the Romans would
never have used that universal formula, “ubi tu Caius ego Caia.”
These directions and cautions must surely have brought our pair of
happy lovers to the wedding-day. Even yet they are not safe from malign
influences, but folk-lore does not forget their welfare. If the
bride has been courted by other sweethearts than the one she has now
definitely chosen, there is a fear lest the discarded suitors should
entertain unkindly feelings towards her. To obviate all unpleasant
consequences from this, the bride must wear a sixpence in her left shoe
until she is “kirked,” say the Scotch. And on her return home, if a
horse stands looking at her through a gateway, or even lingers along
the road leading to her new home, it is a very bad omen for her future
happiness.
When once the marriage-knot is tied, it is so indissoluble that
folk-lore for the most part leaves the young couple alone. It
is imperative, however, that the wife should never take off her
wedding-ring. To do so is to open a door to innumerable calamities,
and a window at the same time through which love may fly. Should the
husband not find that peace and quietness which he has a right to
expect in matrimony, but discover unfortunately that he has married a
scold or a shrew, he must make the best of the case:—
Quæ saga, quis te solvere Thessalis
Magus venenis, quis poterit deus?
Yet folk-lore has still one simple which will alleviate his sorrow.
Any night he will, he may taste fasting a root of radish, say our old
Saxon forefathers, and next day he will be proof against a woman’s
chatter.[21] By growing a large bed of radishes, and supping off them
regularly, it is thus possible that he might exhaust after a time the
verbosity of his spouse, but we are bound to add that we have never
heard of such an easy cure being effected. The cucking-stool was found
more to the purpose in past days.
But Aphrodite lays her finger on our mouth. Having disclosed so many
secrets of her worship, it is time now to be silent.
After all this love-lore, supposing any one were to take a tender
interest in our welfare, we should hint to her that she had no need
of borrowed charms or mystic foreshadowing of the future, in Horatian
words, which we shall leave untranslated as a compliment to Girton:—
Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
Finem di dederint, Leuconoe; nec Babylonios
Tentaris numeros.
Simplicity and openness of disposition are worth more than all
affectations of dress or manner. Well did the Scotch lad in the song
rebuke his sweetheart, who asked him for a “keekin’-glass” (_Anglice_,
“looking-glass”):—
“Sweet sir, for your courtesie,
When ye come by the Bass, then,
For the love ye bear to me,
Buy me a keekin’-glass, then.”