usual custom being to put one plant for herself and another for her
sweetheart. Should these grow together, it is an omen of an approaching
wedding. In Brittany young people prove the good faith of their lovers
by a pretty ceremony. On St. John's Eve, the men, wearing bunches of
green wheat ears, and the women decorated with flax blossoms,
assemble round an old historic stone and place upon it their wreaths.
Should these remain fresh for some time after, the lovers represented by
them are to be united; but should they wither and die away, it is a certain
proof that the love will as rapidly disappear. Again, in Sicily it is
customary for young women to throw from their windows an apple into
the street, which, should a woman pick up, it is a sign that the girl will
not be married during the year. Sometimes it happens that the apple is
not touched, a circumstance which indicates that the young lady, when
married, will ere long be a widow. On this festival, too, the orpine or
livelong has long been in request, popularly known as "Midsummer
men," whereas in Italy the house-leek is in demand. The moss-rose,
again, in years gone by, was plucked, with sundry formalities, on
Midsummer Eve for love-divination, an allusion to which mode of
forecasting the future, as practised in our own country, occurs in the
poem of "The Cottage Girl:"
"The moss-rose that, at fall of dew,
Ere eve its duskier curtain drew,
Was freshly gathered from its stem,
She values as the ruby gem;
And, guarded from the piercing air,
With all an anxious lover's care,
She bids it, for her shepherd's sake,
Awake the New Year's frolic wake:
When faded in its altered hue,
She reads--the rustic is untrue!
But if its leaves the crimson paint,
Her sick'ning hopes no longer faint;
The rose upon her bosom worn,
She meets him at the peep of morn."
On the Continent the rose is still thought to possess mystic virtues in
love matters, as in Thuringia, where girls foretell their future by means
of rose-leaves.
A ceremony belonging to Hallowe'en is observed in Scotland with
some trepidation, and consists in eating an apple before a looking-glass,
when the face of the desired one will be seen. It is thus described by
Burns: