Offerings to the Fairies
A Derbyshire man, aged about 55, said that his grandmother used to tell him that if you made the hearth very tidy before you went to bed, and put a little food on it, you would find the room swept and tidy next morning. He remembers trying this experiment when a boy, and the disappointment he felt when the desired result was not produced.
“Sweeping the Girl” on St. Valentine’s Day
“If the lass is not kissed, or does not get a visit from her sweetheart on St. Valentine’s Day, she is said to be dusty, and the villagers sweep her with a broom, or a wisp of straw. She is bound, subsequently, to cast lots with other girls, and finally, if she has good luck, draws the name of her future husband out of an old top hat.”[129]
Mr. Pendleton tells me in a letter that the custom was observed on the morning of St. Valentine’s Day in the middle of the last century.
JEDEDIAH STRUTT
By the Hon. Frederick Strutt
Jedediah Strutt, the second of three sons of William Strutt, a farmer at South Normanton, Derbyshire, was born on July 26th, 1726. His mother was Martha Statham, of Shottie, a hamlet in the parish of Duffield, at which church she and William Strutt were married on February 11th, 1724.
Of his elder brother Joseph little is known, except that he went to London, where he started in some commercial business, and that he married a Miss Scott.[130]