If you put a four-leaved clover in your shoe before going out for a walk, you will presently meet the one you are to marry. The same charm is used to bring back an absent or wayward lover. Consequently there is much looking for this bashful little plant at all of our matrimonial resorts. The rhymed version runs in this wise:—
“A clover, a clover of two,
Put it in your right shoe;
The first young man you meet,
In field, street, or lane,
You’ll get him, or one of his name.”
In some localities a bean-pod or a pea-pod put over the door acts as a charm to bring the favored of fortune to lift the latch and walk in. This is old. The poet Gay has it in rhyme thus:—
“As peascods once I pluck’d, I chanc’d to see
One that was closely filled with three times three;
Which when I cropp’d, I safely home convey’d,
And o’er the door the spell in secret laid:—
The latch moved up, when who should first come in,
But in his proper person—Lubberkin!”
Another mode of divination runs in this way: On going to bed the girl eats two spoonfuls of salt. The salt causes her to dream that she is dying of thirst; and whoever the young man may be that brings her a cup of water, in her dream, is the one she will marry.[16]
If after seeing a white horse you count a hundred, the first gentleman you meet will be your future husband.
So far as appearances go, at least, the custom of brewing love-philters or love-potions, to forestall or force the natural inclinations, has completely died out. From this source the astrologers, magicians, and fortune-tellers of former times reaped a rich harvest. Many instances of the use of this old custom occur in literature. Josselyn naïvely relates the only one we can call to mind, coming near home to us. He says: “I once took notice of a wanton woman’s compounding the solid roots of this plant (Satyrion) with wine, for an amorous cup, which wrought the desired effect.”
Would that the hideous and barbarous custom of administering poisons to gratify the cravings of hatred or the pangs of jealousy had become equally obsolete! But alas! the “green-eyed monster” is “with us yet.”