ne calm, so will your fate; if of a ring or the ace of diamonds,
marriage; bread, an industrious life; cake, a prosperous life; flowers,
joy; willow, treachery in love; spades, death; diamonds, money;
clubs, a foreign land; hearts, illegitimate children; keys, that you
will rise to great trust and power, and never know want; birds, that
you will have many children; and geese, that you will marry more
than once." [397] Such ridiculous absurdities would be rejected as
apocryphal if young ladies were not still in the habit of placing bits
of wedding cake under their pillows in the hope that their dreaming
eyes may be enchanted with blissful visions of their future lords.

Hone tells us that in Berkshire, "at the first appearance of a new
moon, maidens go into the fields, and, while they look at it, say:--

'New moon, new moon, I hail thee!
By all the virtue in thy body.
Grant this night that I may see
He who my true love is to be.'

Then they return home, firmly believing that before morning their
future husbands will appear to them in their dreams." [398]

In Devonshire also "it is customary for young people, as soon as
they see the first new moon after midsummer, to go to a stile, turn
their back to it, and say:--

'All hail, new moon, all hail to thee!
I prithe, good moon, reveal to me
This night who shall my true love be
Who is he, and what he wears,
And what he does all months and years.'" [399]

Aubrey says the same of the Scotch of his day, and the custom is not
yet extinct. "In Scotland (especially among the Highlanders) the
women doe make a curtsey to the new moon; I have known one in
England doe it, and our English woemen in the country doe retain
(some of them) a touch of this gentilisme still, _e.g._:--

'All haile to thee, moon, all haile to thee
I prithe, good moon, declare to me,
This night, who my husband must be.'

This they doe sitting astride on a gate or stile the first evening the
new moon appears. In Herefordshire, etc., the vulgar people at the
prime of the moon say, ''Tis a fine moon, God bless her.'" [400] "In
Ireland, at the new moon, it is not an uncommon practice for people
to point with a knife, and after invoking the Holy Trinity, to say:--

'New moon, true morrow, be true now to me,
That I ere the morrow my true love may see.'

The knife is then placed under the pillow, and silence strictly
observed, lest the