In the present chapter, however, have been collected together, in as condensed a form as possible, some of the principal items of folk-lore connected with love and courtship, as we find them scattered here and there throughout the country. Commencing, then, with love-divinations, these are of every conceivable kind, the anxious maiden apparently having left no stone unturned in her anxiety to ascertain her lot in the marriage state. Hence in her natural longings to raise the veil of futurity, the aspirant to matrimony, if she be at all of a superstitious turn of mind, seldom lets an opportunity pass by without endeavouring to gain from it some sign or token of the kind of husband that is in store for her. As soon, too, as the appointed one has at last presented himself, she is not content to receive with unreserved faith his professions of love and life-long fidelity; but, in her sly moments, when he is not at hand, she proves the genuineness of his devotion by certain charms which, while they cruelly belie his character, only too often unkindly deceive the love-sick maiden.
In the first place, we may note that love-tests have been derived from a variety of sources, such as plants, insects, animals, birds, not to mention those countless other omens obtained from familiar objects to which we shall have occasion to allude. At the outset, however, it may not be uninteresting to quote the following account of love-charms in use about one hundred and fifty years ago, and which was written by a young lady to the editor of the Connoisseur:—
"Arabella was in love with a clever Londoner, and had tried all the approved remedies. She had seen him several times in coffee grounds with a sword by his side; he was once at the bottom of a tea-cup in a coach and six, with his two footmen behind it. On the last May morning she went into the fields to hear the cuckoo; and when she pulled off her left shoe, she found a hair in it the exact colouring of his. The same night she sowed hempseed in the back yard, repeating the words:—
'Hempseed I sow, hempseed I hoe,
And he that is my true love,
Come after me and mow.'
After that she took a clean shift and turned it, and hung it on the back of a chair; and very likely he would have come and turned it, for she heard a step, and being frightened could not help speaking, and that broke the spell. The maid Betty recommended her young mistress to go backwards, without speaking a word, into the garden on Midsummer Eve, and gather a rose, keep it in a clean sheet of paper without looking in it till Christmas Day, it will be as fresh as in June; and if she sticks this rose in her bosom, he that is to be her husband will come and take it out. Arabella had tried several other strange fancies. Whenever she lies in a strange bed, she always ties her garters nine times round the bed-post, and knits nine knots in it, saying all the time:—
'This knot I knit, this knot I tie,
To see my love as he goes by,
In his apparel and array,
As he walks in every day.'
On the last occasion Mr. Blossom drew the curtains and tucked up the clothes at the bed's feet. She has many times pared an apple whole, and afterwards flung the peel over her head, and on each occasion the peel formed the first letter of his Christian name or surname."
Referring to the use of plants in love-charms, they are very numerous. One popular one consists in taking the leaves of yarrow, commonly called "nosebleed," and tickling the inside of the nostrils, repeating at the same time these lines:—