Rites on the Eve of St. Agnes
Get up at midnight on All Saints’ Eve and stand before a looking-glass, combing your hair with one hand, and eating an apple held in the other, and as the clock strikes twelve you will see in the glass the face of the man you will marry looking over your left shoulder (Shr. Wor.). I can remember a schoolfellow of mine performing this ceremony, but in her case the prophecy proved a false one, for according to her description, the chief feature of the man in the vision was his moustache, and the man she ultimately married had none, for he was a clean-shaven clergyman. Perhaps the reason why the charm failed was because she had no apple to eat! On the Eve of St. Mark (Yks.), or of St. Agnes, Jan. 20 (Lan.), place on the floor a lighted pigtail, a small farthing candle, which must have been previously stolen, or else the charm will not work. Then sit down in silence and watch it till it begins to burn blue, when the future husband will appear and walk across the room. The following is a very simple plan: Spread bread and cheese on the table, and sit down to it alone, observing strict silence. As the clock strikes twelve your future lover will appear and join you at your frugal meal (Cor.). On St. Agnes’ Fast, Jan. 21, you can procure a sight of your future husband thus: Eat nothing all day till bedtime, then boil an egg hard, extract the yolk, fill up the cavity with salt, and eat the egg, shell and all, then walk backwards to bed, repeating these lines: Sweet St. Agnes, work thy fast; If ever I be to marry man, Or man be to marry me, I hope him this night to see (Nhb.). Some say that the same result may be effected by eating a raw red herring, bones and all, before going to bed; or by placing the shoes, on going to bed, at right angles to each other in the shape of a T, saying the while: I place my shoes in form of a T, Hoping my true love to see; Not dressed in his best array, But in the clothes he wears every day (Nhb. Dev.). Another more elaborate ceremony is the preparation of the dumb-cake on St. Mark’s or sometimes on St. Agnes’ Eve (n.Cy. Nhb. Yks. Nhp. Nrf.); or, as in Oxfordshire, on Christmas Eve, under the commonplace name of dough-cake. The cake must be prepared fasting, and in silence. When ready it must be placed in a pan on the coals to bake, and at midnight the future husband will come in, turn the cake, and go out again. In order to dream of the future husband: on a Friday night, when you go to bed, draw your left stocking into your right and say: This is the blessed Friday night; I draw my left stocking into my right, To dream of the living, not of the dead, To dream of the young man I am to wed (Shr.), then go to sleep without uttering another word; read the verse: ‘Lay down now, put me in a surety with thee; who is he that will strike hands with me?’ Job xvii. 3, after supper, then wash up the supper dishes and go to bed without speaking a word, placing the Bible under your pillow with a pin stuck through the verse previously read (ne.Sc.); or place a Bible under your pillow with a crooked sixpence over the verses: ‘And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or return from following after thee....’ Ruth i. 16, 17 (Lan.); take a blade-bone of mutton, stick it full of pins, go upstairs to bed walking backwards, and place the bone under your pillow (Yks.); get a piece of wedding-cake, carry it upstairs backwards, tie it in your left stocking with your right garter, place it under your pillow, and get into bed backwards, keeping strict silence all the while (Cor.). In its simplest form of sleeping with what Addison calls ‘an handsome slice of bride-cake ... placed very conveniently under’ the pillow, this is perhaps the most widely practised of all the dream-charms. Gather on a Friday at midnight nine leaves of the she-holly, Ilex aquifolium, tie them with nine knots inside a three-cornered handkerchief, and place them under the pillow (Nhb.). A way of finding out if you will ever be married or not, is to go into the farmyard at night and tap smartly at the door of the fowl-house. If a hen first cackles, you will never marry, but if a cock crows first then you will marry before the end of the coming year (Dev.). The merry-thought of a fowl is frequently used to ascertain which of two young people will be the first to enter the married state. In some places the shorter piece of the broken bone denotes the nearer marriage, elsewhere the longer piece is the coveted portion. In Northumberland scadded [scalded] peas were formerly eaten out of a large bowl, and the person who obtained the last pea was supposed to be the first married.
Beside these ceremonies—of which the above are a mere handful among the hosts of examples of this popular form of divination which might be quoted—there are the more serious and solemn practices for discovering approaching death, such as watching the kirk on St. Mark’s Eve (Dur. Yks.). The watcher took up his post at midnight in the church porch, and between then and one o’clock he would see pass into the church one by one the figures of all the persons in the parish who would die within the coming year. According to some, all the parishioners would be seen to defile into the church, and then those destined to live through the year would pass out thence, while the doomed would remain behind and never be seen again. Another St. Mark’s Eve custom was the caff-riddling (Yks.), a mode of divination by means of a riddle and chaff. The inquirer repaired at midnight to the barn, and leaving the doors wide open, he there riddled the contents of his sieve, and watched for portents. If a funeral procession passed by, or shapes of men carrying a coffin, then the watcher would die within a year, but if nothing appeared he was destined to live. St. Mark’s Eve was also the night for ash-riddling (n.Cy.). The ashes were riddled on the hearth, and left there untouched when the family retired to rest, the idea being, that if any of the inmates of the house were fated to die within the year, the print of his or her shoe would be found impressed in the soft ashes.
Divination to discover Theft
The ancient form of divination by ‘riddle and shears’ was used for the discovery of theft. A sieve was held in a pair of shears, whilst the names of suspected persons were uttered. At the mention of the culprit’s name, the sieve was supposed to turn round. Similar to this are the investigations made with ‘Bible and key’, though the details of the performance vary slightly in different parts of the country. In Devonshire the trial was conducted thus: the name of the suspected person was written on a piece of paper and placed within the leaves of a Bible, together with the front-door key, the wards of which must rest on the eighteenth verse of Psalm 1: ‘When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him.’ The left garters of two persons were then tied round the Bible, and these two persons placed their right forefingers under the bow of the key, repeating at the same time the above-mentioned verse. If the Bible moved, the suspected person was condemned as guilty, if it remained stationary, he was adjudged innocent.
CHAPTER XVI
BIRTH, MARRIAGE, AND DEATH CUSTOMS
As might be expected, very many ancient superstitious ideas have lingered round the three great events of man’s life—his birth, marriage, and death. They took shape in various customs which were handed down from one generation to another long after the beliefs underlying them had ceased to exist in the popular mind. But now the traditional customs themselves are fast disappearing, whilst often their original significance is a matter only to be explained by the most learned folklorists. Here and there a new meaning has been grafted on to an old practice, which makes the old usage sound rational, and prolongs its life. For instance, in some districts, the first food given to a newly-born baby is a spoonful of butter and sugar, administered as wholesome, and even necessary medicine; but according to scholars, the practice was in origin a religious rite, belonging to remote antiquity. Again, it is popularly regarded as unlucky to cut a baby’s nails before it is a year old, because if this was done the baby would most certainly grow up a thief. If the nails need to be shortened, they must be bitten or pulled off. The real reason why the baby’s fingers must not come in contact with the scissors, is a fear respecting the baneful effect of iron, which has its source in the Dark Ages of primitive man, cp. ‘Professor Rhys believes aversion to iron to be a survival of the feeling implanted in man’s early life, when all metals were new, and hence to be avoided.... The same dread of iron has doubtless given rise to the custom throughout Europe regarding children’s nails. Everywhere, including England, it is the practice to bite off the infant’s nails if too long, and not to cut them, at least for the first year, or until the child, who is peculiarly open to the attacks of all malignant influences, has grown strong,’ F.T. Elworthy, The Evil Eye, 1895, p. 224. Further, Mr. Elworthy tells us that the habit of covering up a new-born baby’s face whenever it is taken out of the house, said to be a necessary protection against the rigour of the outer air, may be referred to the ‘primaeval belief in the liability of infants to the blighting effect of the stranger’s eye,’ The Evil Eye, p. 428.
Birth Customs