To know if your present sweetheart will marry you, let an unmarried woman take the bladebone of a shoulder of lamb, and borrowing a penknife, without on any account mentioning the purpose for which it is required, stick it through the bone when she goes to bed for nine nights in different places, repeating the following lines each time:
'Tis not this bone I mean to stick,
But my love's heart I mean to prick,
Wishing him neither rest nor sleep,
Until he comes to me to speak.
Accordingly at the end of the nine days, or shortly afterwards, he will ask for something to put to a wound he will have met with during the time he was thus charmed. Another method is also employed for the same object. On a Friday morning, fasting, write on four pieces of paper the names of three persons you like best, and also the name of Death, fold them up, wear them in your bosom all day, and at night shake them up in your left shoe, going to bed backwards; take out one with your left hand, and the other with your right, throw three of them out of the shoe, and in the morning whichever name remains in the shoe is that of your future husband. If Death is left, you will not marry any of them.
[VERVAIN.]
The herb vervain was formerly held of great efficacy against witchcraft, and in various diseases. Sir W. Scott mentions a popular rhyme, supposed to be addressed to a young woman by the devil, who attempted to seduce her in the shape of a handsome young man:
Gin you wish to be leman mine,
Leave off the St. John's wort and the vervine.
By his repugnance to these sacred plants, his mistress discovered the cloven foot. Many ceremonies were used in gathering it. "You must observe," says Gerard, "Mother Bumbies rules to take just so many knots or sprigs, and no more, least it fall out so that it do you no good, if you catch no harme by it; many odde olde wives' fables are written of vervaine, tending to witchcraft and sorcerie, which you may reade elsewhere, for I am not willing to trouble your eares with reporting such trifles as honest eares abhorre to heare." An old English poem on the virtue of herbs, of the fourteenth century, says:
As we redyn, gaderyd most hym be
With iij. pater-noster and iij. ave,
Fastand, thow the wedir be grylle,
Be-twen mydde March and mydde Aprille,
And ghet awysyd moste the be,
That the sonne be in ariete.
A magical MS. in the Chetham Library at Manchester, of the time of Queen Elizabeth, furnishes us with a poetical prayer used in gathering this herb:
All hele, thou holy herb vervin,
Growing on the ground;
In the mount of Calvary
There was thou found;
Thou helpest many a greife,
And stenchest many a wound.
In the name of sweet Jesus,
I take thee from the ground.
O Lord, effect the same
That I doe now goe about.