Pullet’s Egg Divination.
Mr. J. Roberts, Plas Einion, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd, told me the following:—When he was a young man, he, his sister, and the servant man, formed a company to find out by divination their future life partners. They procured a pullet’s egg, it was emptied into a cup, to this was added flour and salt, in equal proportions, these ingredients were mixed together, made into three small cakes, and baked. They all ate one half of their cake, and the other half was placed in their respective stockings, to be placed under their bolsters.
They went upstairs backward, and thus to bed, preserving the while, absolute silence. It was believed, he said, that they should that night, in their dreams, if everything were carried out properly, see their partners, who would come to their bedsides to offer them a drink of water.
The Candle and Pin Divination.
The process is as follows:—A couple of young women meet, and stick pins in a candle, and if the divination acts properly the last pin drops out of the candle at 12 o’clock at night, and then the future husband of the girl to whom that pin belongs appears.
I must not name the lady whom I am indebted to for the following information, but she told me that when she was a young woman, she, and her friend, took part in this prying into the future, and exactly at 12 o’clock her companion’s pin fell out of the candle, and at that very instant there was a knocking at the door, and in great fright both ran upstairs, but the knocking continued, and her friend put her head out of the window to enquire who was there, and my informant told me that the man at the door became her friend’s husband, though at the time they were consulting the future she was desperately in love with another man.
There were other ways in which people could Rhamant. Enough has been said on this subject, but there are other practices resorted to, having much the same object in view, which I will now relate.
To ascertain the condition of the Person whom you are to Marry.
Water in Basin Divination.
Should young persons wish to know whether their husbands were to be bachelors, or their wives spinsters, the following test was to be resorted to:—