Apple Peels and Snails to Snare a Husband in the Eighteenth Century, by Diane Scott Lewis

 

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To celebrate February, the month of love, with Valentine's Day, I delved into the superstitions of the past when a village lass searched for her one true love.

Folklore abounds in the villages of England around the single girl’s search for a husband—as in the eighteenth century marriage was what most young women had to look forward to, or they’d be ridiculed and regulated to spinsters, farmed out as governesses, or forced to live on the charity of their family.

Most of these search-for-true-love customs revolved around the seasons.

 
At the ruined Abbey of Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire, girls flocked around the wishing-well in all seasons. To obtain their heart’s desire, they’d pluck a leaf from a nearby laurel bush, make a cup of it, dip this in the well, then turn and face the church. The girl would then “wish” for presumably a man she already has in mind, but must keep this wish a secret or it wouldn’t come true.

Other customs included, in Somersetshire on May Day Eve or St. John’s Eve, a lass putting a snail on a pewter plate. As the snail slithered across the plate it would mark out the future husband’s initials.

On another ritual to this end, writer Daniel Defoe remarked by saying: “I hope that the next twenty-ninth of June, which is St. John the Baptist’s Day, I shall not see the pastures adjacent to the metropolis thronged as they were the last year with well-dressed young ladies crawling up and down upon their knees as if they were a parcel of weeders, when all the business is to hunt superstitiously after a coal under the root of a plantain to put under their heads that night that they may dream who should be their husbands.”

Throwing an apple peel over the left shoulder was also employed in the hopes the paring would fall into the shape of the future husband’s initials. When done on St. Simon and St. Jude’s Day, the girls would recite the following rhyme as they tossed the peel: St. Simon and St. Jude, on you I intrude, By this paring I hold to discover, without any delay please tell me this day, the first letter of him, my true lover.

On St. John’s Eve, his flower, the St. John’s Wort, would be hung over doors and windows to keep off evil spirits, and the girls who weren’t off searching for snails in the pastures, would be preparing the dumb cake. Two girls made the cake, two baked it, and two broke it. A third person would put the cake pieces under the pillows of the other six. This entire ritual must be performed in dead silence-or it would fail. The girls would then go to bed to dream of their future husbands.

On the eve of St. Mary Magdalene’s Day, a spring of rosemary would be dipped into a mixture of wine, rum, gin, vinegar, and water. The girls, who must be under twenty-one, fastened the sprigs to their gowns, drink three sips of the concoction, then would go to sleep in silence and dream of future husbands.



On Halloween, a girl going out alone might meet her true lover. One tale has it that a young servant-maid who went out for this purpose encountered her master coming home from market instead of a single boy. She ran home to tell her mistress, who was already ill. The mistress implored the maid to be kind to her children, then this wife died. Later on, the master did marry his serving-maid.

Myths and customs were long a part of village life when it came to match-making.


Source: English Country Life in the Eighteenth Century, by Rosamond Bayne-Powell, 1935.

Diane lives in Western Pennsylvania with her husband and one naughty dachshund. 

SUPERSTITIONS AND SPOOKY OCCURRENCES - MARGARET TANNER

SPOOKY OCCURRENCES - MARGARET TANNER

Here in Australia celebrating Halloween is not as popular as it is in the US. In fact, for people of my generation, we virtually didn’t celebrate it at all. The present generation are starting to get into it though, and I have noticed Halloween masks and costumes in many of the shops.

I write historical romance, no ghosts in my stories, but there are some strange, unexplained things that do happen in my novel, Lauren’s Dilemma. The really weird thing is that these occurrences or ones very similar did happen, according to my grandmother. I can remember as a child her telling my sister and I about some of the strange happenings to members of her extended family.

One of her stories dealt with a young cousin who was terrified of water and could not swim.  She was a sleepwalker and one night she disappeared from her bed. The parents went in search of her and found her swimming around in a water hole on their farm. The father jumped into the water to get her, the mother screamed out, and the young girl woke up and drowned before her father could rescue her. When she was awake the girl was afraid of water and couldn't swim, but when sleep walking she could swim quite well.

 My grandmother used to say, it was bad luck to bring peacock feathers into your house.  Another of her superstitions was regarding the wattle bush. It was said to bring bad luck and death if you brought it inside. The wattle bush, which is covered in small, bright yellow fluffy balls, flowers in early spring. It is very bad for you if you suffer allergies like hay-fever or asthma. Grandma used to call wattle the death flower because if you brought it inside your house, someone would die.  Needless to say we never picked it.

 Thinking about this as an adult, I worked out that it was a superstition based on fact, even if my grandmother didn’t know it. If you were an asthma sufferer in the 1890’s with no proper medication, if someone did bring in a bunch of wattle and put it in a vase on the sideboard, it could, and probably did trigger an asthma attack.

 Now back to Lauren’s Dilemma. This story is set during the 1^st World War. Lauren’s childhood sweetheart, Danny, is killed at Gallipoli (in Turkey) in 1915. She mourns him but eventually marries another wounded soldier, Blair Sinclair, and they go to live on an isolated cattle property.

 On a couple of occasions, when Lauren (Laurie) has been in danger, she thinks she hears Danny calling out to her, and on these occasions she can always smell the herb thyme. Thyme grows wild on Gallipoli.

“One afternoon in November of 1918, Laurie was in the homestead alone. Her father and Blair had gone into town for supplies, and baby Daniel was taking a nap. The windows stood wide open in the sitting room to let in the early summer breeze. As she sat in an armchair she drifted between sleep and wakefulness.

“Laurie, Laurie.” She opened her eyes and Danny stood near the fireplace. He was in uniform. His head was bare, his brown curls just as windblown and unruly as she remembered.

“The war is over.” He gave a boyish smile. “You can be happy now.”

“Laurie, great news.” Blair dashed into the room and pulled her to her feet. “I heard it in town. They've signed an Armistice at last. The war is over.”

“I know.” She did a little jig.

“What! How could you?”

“Danny told me. He was here a minute ago.”

“Laurie!” Blair was shocked as he stared into her over-bright eyes. “There's only us in the room.”

“He stood over there, by the fire. I know it sounds crazy, but I saw him.”

She smiled. Her face suddenly took on such a serene beauty the breath caught in his throat. She blew him a kiss. Laughing, he reached out and pretended to catch it.

After Laurie left for the nursery to attend little Daniel, Blair suddenly became aware of the bittersweet smell of herbs wafting around the room. Some instinct drew him toward the fireplace. There on the hearth lay a sprig of thyme.”

 

 

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Snails Instead of Match.com? Husband Hunting in the 18t c. by Diane Scott Lewis

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In these modern times with the internet (and women freely allowed to enter bars) females have choices in their search for a mate. But in eighteenth century England, my era of research, girls were superstitious, and quite limited, especially in the small country villages.

An English lass's search for a husband was vitally important. In bygone periods marriage was what most young women had to look forward to, or they’d be ridiculed and regulated to spinsters, farmed out as governesses, or forced to live on the charity of their already poor families.

To this end, many relied on ancient customs and folklore. Most of these search-for-true-love customs revolved around the seasons.

Cerne Abbas

At the ruined Abbey of Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire, girls flocked around the wishing-well in all seasons. To obtain their heart’s desire, they’d pluck a leaf from a nearby laurel bush, make a cup of it, dip this in the well, then turn and face the church. The girl would then "wish" for presumably a man she already has in mind, but must keep this wish a secret or it wouldn’t come true.

Other customs included, in Somersetshire on May Day Eve or St. John’s Eve, a lass putting a snail on a pewter plate. As the snail slithered across the plate it would mark out the future husband’s initials.

On another ritual to this end, writer Daniel Defoe remarked by saying: "I hope that the next twenty-ninth of June, which is St. John the Baptist’s Day, I shall not see the pastures adjacent to the metropolis thronged as they were the last year with well-dressed young ladies crawling up and down upon their knees as if they were a parcel of weeders,

Defoe

when all the business is to hunt superstitiously after a coal under the root of a plantain to put under their heads that night that they may dream who should be their husbands."

Throwing an apple peel over the left shoulder was also employed in the hopes the paring would fall into the shape of the future husband’s initials. When done on St. Simon and St. Jude’s Day, the girls would recite the following rhyme as they tossed the peel: St. Simon and St. Jude, on you I intrude, By this paring I hold to discover, without any delay please tell me this day, the first letter of him, my true lover.

On St. John’s Eve, his flower, the St. John’s Wort, would be hung over doors and windows to keep off evil spirits, and the girls who weren’t off searching for coal or snails in the pastures, would be preparing the dumb cake. Two girls made the cake, two baked it, and two broke it. A third person would put the cake pieces under the pillows of the other six. This entire ritual must be performed in dead silence-or it would fail. The girls would then go to bed to dream of their future husbands.

On the eve of St. Mary Magdalene’s Day, a spring of rosemary would be dipped into a mixture of wine, rum, gin, vinegar, and water. The girls, who must be under twenty-one, fastened the sprigs to their gowns, drink three sips of the concoction, then would go to sleep in silence and dream of future husbands.

On Halloween, a girl going out alone might meet her true lover. One tale has it that a young servant-maid who went out for this purpose encountered her master coming home from market instead of a single boy. She ran home to tell her mistress, who was already ill. The mistress implored the maid to be kind to her children, then this wife died. Later on, the master did marry his serving-maid.

Myths and customs were long a part of village life when it came to match-making. Now they sound much more fun than the click of a mouse on a computer. But then as now, you never know what you'll end up with.

In my novel, Ring of Stone,which takes place in eighteenth-century Cornwall, my heroine Rose will experience magic on All Hallows Eve and glimpse her future husband over her sHoulder.  Click the cover at the top of this Blog to buy a copy of Ring of Stone. Thanks for reading my blog post, and I hope you will purchase and enjoy my novel(s) as well.

For more on Diane Scott Lewis’s novels, visit her website: http://www.dianescottlewis.org

Source: English Country Life in the Eighteenth Century, by Rosamond Bayne-Powell, 1935.

Diane Scott Lewis - Crazy Superstitions on Bodily Health

In researching my eighteenth-century novel, Ring of Stone-I delved into this research for a character, a young physician-I came across many interesting beliefs on how to cure sickness.

Before modern medicine lay people and some physicians held the belief that transferring the ailment to another object could cure you of disease. Since antiquity, and well into the eighteenth century, people believed that men reflected aspects of the natural world. It was a dominant strategy that explained the mysteries beyond the ken of the science of the day.

A man in late seventeenth century Somerset claimed that his brother was cured of a rupture by being passed through a slit cut in a young ash tree, three times on three Monday mornings before dawn. When the tree was later cut down, his brother grew ill again.

To cure jaundice, you took the patient’s urine, mix it with ashes and make three equal balls. Put these before a fire, and when they dried out, the disease leaves and he’s cured.

In Devon, to cure the quartan ague, you baked the patient’s urine into a cake, then fed the cake to a dog, who would take on the disease.

Even Richard Wiseman—a Barber Surgeon—who wrote Chirurgicall Treatises during the time of Charles II, believed to remove warts you rub them with a slice of beef, then bury the beef.

Color as well played a part in how health was viewed. "Yellow" remedies were used to cure jaundice: saffron, celandine with yellow flowers, turmeric, and lemon rind. John Wesley, who wrote Primitive Physick, in the mid-eighteenth century, suggested that sufferers of this illness wear celandine leaves under their feet.

Health was also governed by astrological explanations. Manuals intended for physicians and apothecaries included this "otherwordly" advice. Nicholas Culpeper detailed which herbs were presided over by which planets in his famous health text, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. For example, if a headache was caused by the actions of Venus, then fleabane (an herb of Mars) would cure the malady.

However, the Vox Stellarum, the most popular almanac in the eighteenth century, took a more moderate view: "Men may be inclin’d but not compell’d to do good or evil by the influence of the stars." Yet this same almanac, in 1740, listed which diseases were prevalent in certain months—a vestigial form of astrological medicine.

Thank goodness more enlightened physicians, such as brothers William (a leading anatomist and renown obstetrician) and John Hunter (one of the most distinguished scientists and surgeons of his day) in the eighteenth century, came along to bring medical thinking into the modern world.

William Hunter

Though superstition among the lay people remained.

Information taken from, Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth Century Bristol, by Mary E. Fissell, 1991.

For more on myths and superstition, check out my novel Ring of Stone, where the myths of a stone ring in remote Cornwall may save a life while destroying another.

Here's the beautiful cover by Michelle.

　
To learn more about my novels: http://www.dianescottlewis.org