Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/125

 Rh Accordingly, in a dream, he will appear with the insignia of his trade or profession.

Another mode of divination is by the willow wand. Let a maiden take a willow branch in her left hand, and, without being observed, slip out of the house and run three times round it, whispering all the time, “He that’s to be my gude man come and grip the end o’t.” During the third run, the likeness of her future husband will appear and grasp the other end of the wand, A sword is sometimes used instead of a wand, but, in this case, it must be held in the right hand.

This spell somewhat resembles one by which German girls ascertain the colour of their future husband’s hair. They call it hair-snatching, and practise it thus. Between the hours of eleven and twelve at night, on St. Andrew’s Eve, a maiden must stand at the house-door, take hold of the latch, and say three times “Gentle love, if thou lovest me, show thyself.” She must then quickly open the door wide enough to put out her hand, and make a rapid grasp out in the dark, and she will find in her hand a lock of her future husband’s hair. Belgian girls, who desire to see their husbands in a dream, lay their garters crosswise at the foot of the bed, and a looking-glass under their pillow; in this glass the image of their future husband will appear.

A story is told in the Wilkie MS. of a young woman who, on waking one New Year’s morning, found a sword lying at her bedside. Imagining that it had been used in the divinations of the previous evening, and carried away from its owner by some spirit who had been too rashly invoked, she took it up, and locked it in her chest. Those who find these swords or divining-rods do this, lest the spirits make them a means of temptation; at the same time, those who lose them are always restless till they can recover them. The young woman was afterwards married to a gentleman’s servant, and in course of time became a mother. One day, soon after her infant’s birth, she gave her husband the key of her chest, and begged him to give her some articles of clothing from