A still different rendering is given by Burns. According to him each questioner of the charm names two nuts, one for himself, one for his sweetheart, presumably the mode practised in Scotland in his time:—
“Jean slips in twa wi’ tentie e’e;
Wha ’twas, she wadna tell;
But this is Jock, an’ this is me,
She says in to hersel’:
He blaz’d o’er her, an’ she owre him,
As they wad never mair part;
’Till, fuff! he started up the lum,
An’ Jean had e’en a sair heart
To see’t that night.”
Popping corn sometimes takes the place of burning the nuts. The spoken invocation is then “Pit, put, turn inside out!”
There are also several methods of performing this act of divination with apples. The one most practised in New England is this: First pare an apple. If you succeed in removing the peel all in one piece, throw it over your head, and should the charm work well, the peel will so fall as to form the first letter of your future husband’s name, or as Gay poetically puts it:—
“I pare this pippin round and round again,
My shepherd’s name to nourish on the plain:
I fling th’ unbroken paring o’er my head,
Upon the grass a perfect L is read.”
When sleeping in a strange bed for the first time, name the four posts for some of your male friends. The post that you first look at, upon waking in the morning, bears the name of the one whom you will marry. Care is usually taken to fall asleep on the right side of the bed.
By walking down the cellar stairs backward, holding a mirror over your head as you go, the face of the person whom you will marry will presently appear in the mirror.
The oracle of the daisy flower, so effectively made use of in Goethe’s “Faust,” is of great antiquity, and is perhaps more often consulted by blushing maidens than any other. When plucking away the snowy petals, the fair questioner of fate should murmur low to herself the cabalistic formula:—
“‘He loves me, loves me not,’ she said,
Bending low her dainty head
O’er the daisy’s mystic spell.
‘He loves me, loves me not, he loves,’
She murmurs ’mid the golden groves
Of the corn-fields on the fell.”
As the last leaf falls, so goes the prophecy.