Should this little insect chance to fly in the direction of the house where the loved one resides, it is regarded as a highly-favourable omen. The snail, again, was much used in love-divinations, many an eager maiden anxious of ascertaining her lover's name following the example of Hobnelia, who, in order to test the constancy of her Lubberkin, did as follows:-- "Upon a gooseberry bush a snail I found, For always snails near sweetest fruit abound. I seized the vermin, home I quickly sped, And on the hearth the milk-white embers spread; Slow crawled the snail, and, if I right can spell, In the soft ashes marked a curious L. Oh! may this wondrous omen lucky prove, For 'L' is found in Lubberkin and Love." Three magpies are said to prognosticate a wedding; and in our rural districts the unmarried of either sex calculate the number of years of single blessedness still allotted to them by counting the cuckoo's notes when they first hear it in the spring. Some days are considered specially propitious for practising love-divinations. Foremost among these is St. Valentine's Day, a festival which has been considered highly appropriate for such ceremonies, as there is an old tradition that on this day birds choose their mates, a notion which is frequently alluded to by the poets, and particularly by Chaucer, to which reference is made also in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_:-- "Good morrow, friends, St. Valentine is past; Begin the wood-birds but to couple now." Thus, the Devonshire young ladies have a fancy that on St. Valentine's Day they can, if they wish, make certain of their future. If so disposed, they go into the churchyard at midnight, with some hempseed in their hand, which, after they have walked round the church a certain number of times, they scatter on either side as they return homewards, repeating a certain charm. It is supposed that the true lover will be seen taking up the hempseed just sown, attired for the ceremony in a winding-sheet. Another species of love-divination once observed consisted in obtaining five bay leaves, four of which the anxious maiden pinned at the four corners of her pillow, and the fifth in the middle. If she was fortunate enough to dream of her lover, it was a sure sign that he would be married to her in the course of the year. Again, some young people would boil an egg hard, and, after taking out the contents, fill the shell with salt, the charm consisting in eating the shell and salt on going to bed at night without either speaking or drinking after it. A further method of divination was practised in the following way:--The lady wrote her lovers' names upon small pieces of paper, and, rolling them up in clay, put them into a tub of water. The first that rose to the surface was to be not only her Valentine, but, in all probability, her future husband.