Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/96

 So Collectanea.

If I am his bride to be, If I am his clothes to wear, If I am his children to bear, I hope he'll turn his face to me. Bui if I am not his bride to be, If I am not his clothes to wear, If I am not his children to bear, I hope he'll turn his back to me."

After saying this, you must get into bed backwards, and not speak afterwards.

If you wished to know if your lover was constant, you must gather four long blades of grass (called ' lovelaces ') and hold them in your hand. Then tie them together in four knots, two at each end, saying while you do so, —

" If you love nie cling all round me. If you hate me fall off quite. If you neither love nor hate Come in two at last.''

If the grasses form a ring, he is constant ; if all the knots come undone, he hates you ; if they come in two pieces, he is in- different.

There was also a method of finding out the initials of your future husband, known as the "Bible and Key." You placed the door key between the leaves of the Bible, leaving the ring of the key outside, and tied your garter round the covers. Then two persons held up the Bible by placing the first finger on the ring of the key, one of them saying the following verses from the Song of .Solomon :—" His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me. I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, . . . that ye stir not up, nor awake my love till he please. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it : if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned." Then you said slowly the letters of the alphabet, beginning at A, and, when you got to the initial of your future husband, the key slowly turned round.

Another way girls have of telling their fortunes, which is common to the whole county and is still practised, is by taking a seed-stalk of grass, called a 'bennet,' and saying the following, as they touch a seed, beginning at the bottom of the stalk and finishing at the