Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/126

 104 it; he opened the chest, beheld the sword, recognised it as his own, seized it, and exclaiming, “This is my sword which has troubled me so long!” transfixed himself with it on the spot, to the consternation and horror of his poor wife.

The sowing of hemp-seed on All Hallowe’en, with a hope that the future husband or wife will appear to reap it, is a well-known Scottish observance. Burns describes how, in spite of Auld Grannie’s warnings,

So the gudeman brought down the pock and gied him out a handful, and Jamie slipped away into the rick-yard,

Nothing however seems to have come of it but an encounter with “grumphie” and the overthrow of the hero. I learn with surprise from Mr. H. Denny that this rite was practised as far south as Norfolk. St. Martin’s night was the proper occasion for it, and he calls it a well-known custom. “I remember,” he writes, “a young girl who was staying at my mother’s house about fifty years since who wished to go through the ceremony a few minutes before 12 P.M. She accordingly went downstairs into the kitchen followed by me. In the centre was a round table, and around this she was to go at midnight with hempseed, repeating as she scattered her seed,

If the person intended to be evoked was to be the husband, he would appear behind the sower with a scythe in his hand to