“Yarrow, sweet Yarrow, the first that I have found,
In the name of Jesus Christ I pluck it from the ground;
As Jesus loved sweet Mary, and took her for His dear,
So in a dream this night, I hope my true love will appear.”
She must then sleep with the Yarrow under her pillow, and in her dreams her future husband will appear.——Another formula states: The Yarrow must be plucked exactly on the first hour of morn: place three sprigs in your shoe or glove, saying:—
“Good morning, good morning, good Yarrow,
And thrice good morning to thee;
Tell me, before this time to-morrow,
Who my true love is to be.”
Observe, a young man must pluck the Yarrow off a young maiden’s grave, and a female must select that off a bachelor’s. Retire home to bed without speaking another word, or it dissolves the spell; put the Yarrow under your pillow, and it will procure a sure dream on which you may depend.——In another spell to procure for a maiden a dream of the future, she is to make a posey of various coloured flowers, one of a sort, some Yarrow off a grave, and a sprig of Rue, and bind all together with a little hair from her head. She is then to sprinkle the nosegay with a few drops of the oil of amber, using her left hand, and bind the flowers round her head when she retires to rest in a bed supplied with clean linen. This spell it is stated will ensure the maid’s future fate to appear in a dream.——The Yarrow acquired the name of Nosebleed from its having been put into the nose to cause bleeding, and to cure the megrim, as we learn from Gerarde. Dr. Prior adds, that it was also called Nosebleed from its being used as a means of testing a lover’s fidelity, and he quotes from Forby, who, in his ‘East Anglia,’ says that, in that part of England, a girl will tickle the inside of the nostril with a leaf of this plant, crying:—