Page:Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders.djvu/196

174 It is interesting to compare this history with the following, from the neighbourhood of the Hartz Mountains. In that district girls obtain a glimpse of their future husbands in the following manner. At nightfall a maiden must shut herself up in her sleeping-room, take off all her clothes, and place upon a table, covered with a white cloth, two beakers, the one filled with wine, the other with pure water. She must then repeat the following words:

This done, the form of the future husband will appear, and drink from one of the cups. If poor he will sip the water, if rich the wine.

An over-curious maiden once summoned her future husband in this manner. Precisely as the clock struck twelve he appeared, drank from the wine-cup, laid a three-edged dagger on the table and vanished. The girl put the dagger in her trunk. Some years afterwards a man arrived in that place from a distant part of the country, bought property there, saw the girl, and married her. It was the same whose form had appeared to her that night. After a time he chanced to open his wife’s trunk, and there beheld the dagger. At the sight of it he became furious. “Thou, then, art the woman,” he exclaimed, “who, years ago, forced me to come hither from afar in the night, and it was no dream! Die, therefore!” and with these words he thrust the dagger in her heart.

Something like this is named in the Universal Fortune Teller. “Any unmarried woman fasting on Midsummer Eve, and at midnight, spreading a clean cloth with bread, cheese, and ale, and sitting down to the table as if to eat, the street door being