All hail, new moon, all hail to thee.
I prithee, good moon, reveal to me,
This night, who shall my true love be.
Who he is and what he wears,
And what he does all months and years.
If she were to be married in the course of the next twelve months, the moon answered her questions during her sleep of the same evening.
In many parts of the country it is supposed that, on Christmas Eve, the moon will help maidens to find out when they are to be married. The plan is for a maiden to borrow a silk handkerchief from a male relation and to take it and a mirror to some sheet of water, while the night is dark. She must go quite alone; but the sheet of water may be an unromantic pail, full to the brim, stationed at the bottom of the garden. As soon as the moon shows itself, the maiden places the flimsy piece of silk in front of her eyes, and, by holding the mirror half towards the moon and half towards the water, it is possible for her to see more than a pair of reflections. The number of reflections are the months which will ensue before her wedding bells ring out.
We recently came across the following information in a document quite three hundred years old:
"The first, second and third days of the moon's age are lucky for buying and selling; the seventh, ninth and eleventh are lucky for engagements and marriage; the sixteenth and twenty-first are not lucky for anything."