Nottinghamshire.
If a girl had two lovers, and wished to know which would be the most constant, she procured two brown apple pippins, and sticking one on each cheek (after having named them from her lovers) while she repeated this couplet:
“Pippen, pippen, I stick thee there,
That that is true thou may’st declare,”
patiently awaited until one fell off, when the unfortunate swain whose name it bore was instantly discarded as being unfaithful. It is to this custom that Gay has thus alluded:
“See from the core two kernels now I take,
This on my cheek for Lubberkin is worn,
And Booby Clod on t’other side is borne;
But Booby Clod soon falls upon the ground,
A certain token that his love’s unsound;
While Lubberkin sticks firmly to the last;
Oh! were his lips to mine but joined so fast.”
Jour. of Arch. Assoc. 1853, vol. iii. p. 286.