Come after me and show thee.”
The figure of the girl’s lover, it is then supposed, will appear and run after her. In the poem of ‘The Cottage Girl,’ the rite of sowing Hemp-seed is thus described:—
“To issue from beneath the thatch,
With trembling hand she lifts the latch,
And steps, as creaks the feeble door,
With cautious feet the threshold o’er;
Lest, stumbling on the horseshoe dim,
Dire spells unsinew ev’ry limb.
“Lo! shudd’ring at the solemn deed,
She scatters round the magic seed,