The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1885-04-16
Days Sacred to Mystic Rites.

The day of all others sacred to mys-
tic rites was ever the eve of st. Agnes.
(Jan. 20 when maidens tasted and
then watched for a signs. A passage in
the office for St. Agncs's Day in the
Sarum Missal may have given rise to
this custom: '.Hnc est virgo sapiens
guam Dominus rigilantem INVENT"
and the Gospel is the Parable of the
Virgins. Ben Jonson alludes to the
custom:
.On sweet Saint Agnes's night
Please You with the promised sight,
Some of husbands, some of lovers
Which an empty dream discovers"
And character in Cupid Whirlicio''
G616) says, Il could find in my heart
to pray nine times to the moone and
fast three st. Agnes's Ewes, so that [
might be sure to have him to my hus-
band" Aubrey gives two receipts to
the ladies for that eve which NAV still
be useful, Take row of pins and pull
ont every one one after another, say
Ing paternoster and sticking a pin in
your sleeve, and you will dream of him
you shall marry. Again, 'syou must
lie in another country, and knit the
LETT garter about the right-legged
stocking, Net the other garter and
stocking alone,) and as YOU rehearse
these following verses at every comma
knit knot
This knot 7 knit
10 know the thing, know not yet
That may see
The man that shall my husband be-
How he goes, and what he wears
And what he does, all days and years"
Accordingly in your dream YOU will
see him; if a musician, with a Lutte or
Scln
book or papers, and he adds a little
encouragement to use this device in
the following auecdote: "A pentie-
woman that | knew confessed in NV
hearing that she used this method and
dreamed of her husband whom she had
never seen. About two or three years
after, as she was on Sunday at church,
(at our Lady's Church in Sarum.) up
pops young OXonian in the pulpit;
she cries out presently to her sister,
This is the very face of the man that [
saw in my dream. Sir William Soame's
lady did the like. " 1t is hardly need
full to remind readers of Keats Eve of
ST. Agnes" and the story of Madeline:
Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry
day,
On love, and wing'd St Agnes's SANITY care.
AS she had heard Old DANES full many times
Our ancestors made merry in a SINH
lar fashion on St. Valentines Day. So
Herrick, speaking of bride, says:
she must no more a-maying,
Or by rC sebuds divine
Who'll be her Valentine"
Brand, who helps us to this quotation.
gives an amusing extract from the
Con7e0tSSeur to the same effect: .Iast
Friday was ST. Valentines Day and the
night before / got five bay leaves, and
pinned four of them to the four corners
of my pillow, and the fifth to the mid
die; and then, if dreamt of my sweet
heart, Betty said we should be married
before the year was Out. But to make
1t more sure [ boiled an egg hard, and
took out the yolk and filled it with salt.
and when | went to bed eat it, shell
and all, without speaking or drinking
after it. We also wrote our lovers
names upon bits of paper, and rolled
them up in clay. and put them into
water, and the first that rose up was to
be our valentine. Would you think itp
MIR. Blossom was my man. lay abed
and shut my eyes all the morning till
he came to our house, for | would not
have seen another man before him for
all the world, ,"--BelgrdUia.