He that loves, let him come to gather.”
It was also the custom in the same county for young men and young women to go round a grove and take a handful of moss, in which was found the colour of the future wife or husband’s hair.
In Pembrokeshire, it is the custom for young girls to put under their pillow at night, a shoulder of mutton, with nine holes bored in the blade bone, and at the same time they put their shoes at the foot of the bed in the shape of the letter T, and an incantation is said over them. By doing this, they are supposed to see their future husbands in their dreams, and that in their everyday clothes. This curious custom of placing shoes at the foot of the bed was very common till very recently, and, probably, it is still so, not only in Pembrokeshire, but with Welsh girls all over South Wales. A woman who is well and alive told me once, that many years ago she had tried the experiment herself, and she positively asserted that she actually saw the spirit of the man who became her husband, coming near her bed, and that happened when she was only a young girl, and some time before she ever met the man. When she was telling me this, she had been married for many years and had grown-up children, and I may add that her husband was a particular friend of mine.
Another well-known form of divination, often practised by the young girls in Carmarthenshire, Cardiganshire and Pembrokeshire, is for a young woman to wash her shirt or whatever article of clothing she happens to wear next to the skin, and having turned it inside out, place it before the fire to dry, and then watch to see who should come at midnight to turn it. If the young woman is to marry, the spirit of her future husband is supposed to appear and perform the work for the young woman, but if she is to die single, a coffin is seen moving along the room, and many a young girl has been frightened almost to death in performing these uncanny ceremonies. The Rev. D. G. Williams in his excellent Welsh essay on the Folk-lore of Carmarthenshire, mentions a farmer’s daughter who practised this form of divination whilst she was away from home at school. A young farmer had fallen in love with her, but she hated him with all her heart. Whilst she was performing this ceremony at midnight, another girl, from mere mischief dressed herself in man’s clothing, exactly the same kind as the clothes generally worn by the young farmer I have mentioned, and, trying to appear as like him as possible, entered the room at the very moment when the charm of invoking the spirit of a future husband was being performed by the farmer’s daughter, who went half mad when she saw, as she thought, the very one whom she hated so much, making his appearance.
The other girls had to arouse their schoolmistress from her bed immediately so that she might try and convince the young girl that she had seen nothing, but another girl in man’s clothes. But nothing availed. The doctor was sent for, but he also failed to do anything to bring her to herself, and very soon the poor young woman died through fright and disappointment.
Another common practice in West Wales is for a young woman to peel an apple at twelve o’clock, before a looking glass in order to see the spirit of her future husband. This also is done on All Hallow’s Eve. Sowing Hemp Seed is also a well-known ceremony among the young ladies of Wales, as well as England.
THE CANDLE AND PIN DIVINATION.
It was also the custom, at least many years ago, if not now, for a young woman, or two of them together to stick pins at midnight in a candle, all in a row, right from its top to the bottom, and then to watch the candle burning and the pins dropping one by one, till the last pin had dropped, and then the future husband of the girl to whom the pin belonged, was supposed to appear; but if she was destined to die single, she would see a coffin.
Another form of Divination, was to put the plates on the dining-room table upside down, and at midnight the spirit of the future husband was supposed to come and arrange them in their proper order.