# Folk-Lore Record/Volume 1/Some West Sussex Superstitions Lingering in 1868/Chapter 4

CHAPTER IV.
OMENS AND PRESAGES ASSOCIATED WITH LOVE AND MARRIAGE.
HOULD a girl wish to ascertain what will be the personal appearance of her future husband, she must sit across a gate or stile and look steadfastly at the first new moon that rises after New Year's day. She must go alone and must not have confided her intention of doing so to any one, and when the moon appears it is thus apostrophized—
"All hail to thee, moon! All hail to thee! I pray thee, good moon, reveal to me This night who my husband must be."
I know no recent instance of this charm being tried, but I hear that the new January moon is still watched by our Sussex maidens, who, shivering with cold and fear, see the likeness of the future husband come—
We can indeed boast of almost as many sure experiments for ascertaining our fate in love and marriage as the Scotch, and two of them are practised on the eve of the 31st of October, our Hallowe'en, a night on which monie lads' and lasses' fates are decided. I have been sometimes asked for nuts and apples, in order that these charms might be tried. (95) The nuts are placed in a bright fire side by side, the one of them belonging to a youth, the other to a maiden, who, after thinking of the loved name, repeat to themselves these words, varying the pronoun according to sex,—
"If he loves me, pop and fly, If he hates me, lie and die."
Anxious faces arc seen round the hearth, while the owners of the nuts arc listening eagerly for the hoped-for pop, and great is the dismay of the proprietor of that which dies and makes no sign. ​(96) The apple charm is very simple, consisting merely in every person present fastening an apple on a string, hung and twirled round before a hot fire. The owner of the apple that first falls off is declared to be upon the point of marriage; and as they fall successively, the order in which the rest of the party will attain to matrimonial honours is clearly indicated; single blessedness being the lot of the one whose apple is the last to drop. It will be remembered that the burning nuts and roasting apples are amongst the Scottish spells of Burns's Hallowe'en, and it may be noted with regard to the nuts that we in Sussex interpret the sign diversely, for in Scotland a silent burning forebodes a smooth course and happy issue of the courtship, whilst the contrary may be looked for if the nuts "start awa' with saucy pride."
(97) Our custom of cutting the common brake or fern just above the root to ascertain the initial letters of the future wife's or husband's name bears some resemblance .to the pulling up of the nail-plant in Scotland, the first ceremony of Hallowe'en.
(98) There is an experimental spell which I have tried sometimes in my youth in Sussex. A ring, or piece of money, is suspended by a thread or hair, and held as steadily as may be within a glass. The belief is, that when it begins to oscillate it will strike the number of years that are to pass before the holder of the thread is married.
(99) A spell less pardonable than these is sometimes resorted to in order to ascertain which of two persons will first be married. A key is fastened with a string within the pages of a small Bible, the ring of the key protruding from it, by which ring the book is to be suspended from a finger of each of the two young people who are trying their matrimonial fate. They stand as motionless as possible and repeat a verse from the Bible, usually the 16th of the first chapter of Ruth—"Intreat me not to leave thee," &c. After waiting a short time the fingers of course move imperceptibly, and the book turning slowly round presents a corner to one of the holders of the key, who is pronounced by the lookers-on to be the favoured one. I have heard even well-educated persons confess, not quite without a dash of superstitious belief, to having borne part in this strange ceremony. ​(100) There is a charm used in Sussex, which is also a Devonshire superstition, for discovering your real sweetheart. Pluck the yarrow (millefolium, or nose-bleed) growing on a young man's grave, repeating, as you do so, the words following—(they are the Devonshire lines, but our own, which I have not copied, are almost identical)—
"Yarrow, sweet yarrow, the first that I have found, In the name of Jesus Christ, I pluck it from the ground; As Joseph loved sweet Mary, and took her for his dear, So in a dream this night, I hope, my true love will appear,"
and then go to sleep, with the yarrow under your pillow.
(101) Fortunes matrimonial are often told by seers at home from the grounds or sediment remaining at the bottom of a tea-cup; and where to unenlightened eyes nothing is apparent but a little black dust floating in a slop, we are assured that those who have the wit to do so may discern a meaning.
(102) I have known a learned woman confidently foretell the future lot in matrimony of all her fellow-servants with a pack of cards. The cards were dealt round by her into heaps, with much mystical calculation, and the fortunate maiden who found the ace of diamonds in her heap was to marry a rich man; but she who found the knave of clubs or spades would have nothing but poverty and misery in her wedded state. The king of diamonds or of hearts pointed out to the possessor that her partner for life would be a fair man, while the holding of the king of clubs or spades gave warning that he would be dark. It is not quite so obvious why the possession of the knaves of hearts or diamonds showed that you had an unknown enemy.
(103) Matrimonial and other fortunes are also told by the white marks on the finger-nails. The seers commence with the thumb, and say "a gift," and judge of its probable size by that of the mark; they then touch the forefinger, and add "a friend," and gravely tell you, should they find a spot upon the nail of the middle finger, that you have an enemy somewhere. It is the presence or the absence of such a mark on the third finger that proves your future good or ill success in love; one on the little finger warns you that you will soon have to go a journey. ​(104) A bride, on her return from church, is often robbed of all the pins about her dress by the single women present, from the belief that whoever possesses one of them will be married in the course of a year. (105) But a yellow, crooked pin must on no account be picked up, or the tidy person who removes it from the floor will die an old maid. Often have I heard the warning given, not to touch "the nasty thing."
(106) If bees make their nest in the roof of a house, none of the daughters born in that dwelling will marry.
(107) It is some time since I last heard of any young persons seeking to ascertain their matrimonial fate by sowing hemp-seed: but the old superstition still maintains its place in popular belief. The stout-hearted maiden must steal out alone to the church-yard, and sow a handful of hemp-seed, and pretend to harrow it with anything she can drag after her, saying—
"Hemp-seed, I sow thee, Hemp-seed, I sow thee; And he that is my true love Come after me and mow thee!"
and then she is to look over her left shoulder, and she will see a man mowing as he follows her. There are, however, only certain days in the year when the charm will take effect: one, if I remember right, is Midsummer, or St. John's Eve, on which our ancestors used to practise so many superstitious observances; dancing around fires, crowned with garlands, and leaping over them" with words devout and prayers, whereby they think, through all that year, from agues to be free."
We no longer light our bonfires on the eve of good St. John in Sussex, but some of the old superstitious feelings with respect to it still linger amongst us; and simple maidens have confessed in my hearing to their having (108), just before midnight, washed their sarks, and hung them out to dry before the kitchen fire, and waited to see who would come in and turn them. The kitchen door must be set wide open, or the charm will not work. In one case, I was informed, a very tall man in black came in, and turned the sark, and then slowly walked away again. This is another Sussex superstition, ​almost the same with one in Burns's Hallowe'en, where we are told of the fright the widow Leezie got, who went to—
"Where three lairds' lands met at a burn, To dip her left sark sleeve in;"
how she plumpit in the pool, when—
"The deil, or else an outler quey, Gat up and gie a croon;"
and prevented her finishing her spell.