Silence must be preserved till the morning, when the lover is expected to appear in a dream.
Another love spell is "the dumb cake." This cake must be made on New Year's Eve, and eaten in silence by a number of young girls; one of them must place a clean chemise, turned inside out, on a chair before the fire; this must be sprinkled with water by a branch of rosemary; all must then sit round the fire in silence till twelve o'clock. If any among the party wish to be married during the ensuing year, the form of her husband will approach the fire and turn the chemise.
Legends and Traditions.
The legends of Worcestershire, as of most other counties, are mainly traceable to middle-age ecclesiastical influences or to the popular ideas of the author of all evil. Some few are derived from an exaggerated recollection of historical facts, and a still smaller number have descended to us from pagan times. Of these, with others whose origin is buried in obscurity, I shall now proceed to give a sample.
Ribbesford church contains an ancient sculpture on the tympanum of its principal doorway, representing an archer, with a doe or some other animal near him, which he has apparently shot at, but missing his aim, the arrow passes through what some have supposed to be a salmon, others a seal or a beaver; and the legend is, that Robin of Horsehill, the ranger to the manor, went out to shoot a buck, but incontinently pierced a salmon in the river. It is probable, however, in accordance with the known custom of the Norman builders, that the sculpture is merely intended to represent the leading feature of the locality, where an abundance of game was to be procured, the occupants of the manor being bound to furnish sporting for the monks of Worcester. Mr. Lees says that only recently another sculpture has been discovered at this church which seems to establish the proof that they are symbolical in design.
In the sandstone blocks lying in Whelpley and Sapey brooks, on the borders of this county and Herefordshire, are indentations which are accounted for in this way. St. Katharine and her maid Mabel (who ultimately took up their abode at Ledbury in consequence of having heard the bells of that town ring of their own accord), while travelling, had their mare and colt stolen, upon which the saint prayed that wherever the animals and the thief trod, the marks of their feet might be left, as a means of tracing them. The thief, it seems, was a girl in pattens, who took the animals down several brooks to avoid detection, and hence the marks of patten-rings and horses' feet visible to this day. Science, however, cold-blooded and unfeeling, has declared, by the mouth of Messrs. Murchison and Buckland, that the cavities alluded to are void spaces from which concretions of marlstone and other matter have been worked out by the action of the water. It has been subsequently urged by other geologists that these indentations were old water-marks made on the shore when the consolidated "old red" was an ancient sea beach, that they were filled up with soft marly matter, which in modern times was washed away by the continued action of streams in flowing among the stones, and thus the simulated mare and colt's tracks became evident. Two of them, at a place called Jumper's Hole, are very conspicuous, but it is certain that they have been deepened year after year by the action of the water that covers them in time of flood. Between Clifton-on-Teme and Stanford Bishop the best specimens may be seen.
The legend of St. Werstan, the founder of an oratory at Great Malvern, was detailed by Mr. Albert Way in the Journal of the Archæological Institute, in 1845, and illustrations given from the ancient painted glass in the third window of the clerestory, north of the choir in Malvern Abbey church. The glass was probably executed towards the close of the fifteenth century, when a part of the structure was renovated. The first subject represents the hermit, under the guidance of angels, indicating the spot for the erection of an oratory, then the angels are seen dedicating the building, next is a figure of Edward the Confessor granting a charter, and lastly the saint is undergoing martyrdom at the hands of two executioners armed with swords, and the choristers or youths belonging to the establishment are being punished by similar tormentors. The series is highly curious, and seems unaccountably to have escaped notice before.