Derbyshire.
At Ashborne the following custom is observed on Valentine’s Eve. When a young woman wishes to divine who her future husband is to be, she goes into the churchyard at midnight, and as the clock strikes twelve commences running round the church, repeating without intermission:
“I sow hempseed, hempseed I sow,
He that loves me best
Come and after me mow.”
Having thus performed the circuit of the church twelve times without stopping, the figure of her lover is supposed to appear and follow her.—Jour. Arch. Assoc. 1852, vol. vii. p. 209.