Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/124

 102 the Quay learned what was going on, came in, tore the shift away, and vanished, to her no small alarm; and the first thing which attracted her sight the next morning was her shift hanging up on the mast of one of the vessels. A variation of the rite is prescribed in a pamphlet, which appears to have had a wide circulation among the lower orders of our country generally. It is called The Universal Fortune Teller; being sure and certain directions for discovering the secrets of Futurity. The printer’s name is wanting, or has been obliterated, but it bears the date of Monmouth Court, Seven Dials. Oddly enough, the copy in my possession dropped from the pocket of a chorister on leaving Exeter College Chapel, Oxford, and was sent to me by one of the Fellows who picked it up. It prescribes the following charm for gaining sight of a future husband.

On Midsummer Eve, just at sunset, three, five, or seven young women are to go into a garden in which there is no other person, and each gather a sprig of red sage. Then going into a room by themselves, they must set a stool in the middle of the room, and on it a clean basin full of rose-water, into which the sprigs of sage are to be put. Lastly; tying a line across the room, each girl is to hang on it a clean shift, turned the wrong side outwards, and then all are to sit down in a row on the opposite side of the stool, as far off as may be, not speaking all the time, whatever they may see. Just after midnight the future husband of each one will take her sprig out of the water, and sprinkle her shift with it.

The same authority prescribes another mode of procedure. A young woman must sleep in a county different from that in which she usually resides, and, on going to bed, must knit the left garter about the right stocking, rehearsing the following verses, and at every comma knitting a knot: