Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/137

 Rh evening, and, standing over the spars of a gate or stile, and looking on the moon, repeat the following lines:

You will dream that night of your future husband.” This rite is practised too in Sussex, where they say also that if you can catch a falling leaf you will have twelve months of happiness.

A Yorkshire rhyme avers—

but does not specify wherefore.

Mr. Denham tells us that he once saw an old matron turn her apron to the new moon to insure good luck for the ensuing month. I may, perhaps, mention here, that apples are said to “shrump up” in Devonshire if picked when the moon is waning.

The May new moon is said in the South of England to have a share in curing scrofulous complaints. I have been told of a man residing near Chichester who has twice travelled into Dorsetshire with different members of his family to place them under a “cunning man” there. His charms were only potent in the month of May. And he required his patients to have their eyes fixed upon the new May moon while they received from his hands boxes of ointment made from herbs gathered when the moon was full. On the man’s last visit he found more than 200 persons waiting to be charmed, who had sat up for several hours for fear of missing the right moment for looking at her.

A certain unluckiness is held all England over to attend a May kitten as well as a May baby. The latter will be sickly and difficult to rear; the former must be drowned without mercy; no good would come of rearing it; it would only bring snakes and slowworms into the house and never kill rat or mouse. Nay, it is averred that it would suck the breath of children and