Nothing is easier than to dream of a sweetheart. Only put a piece of wedding-cake under your pillow, and your wish will be gratified. If you are in doubt between two or three lovers, which you should choose, let a friend write their names on the paper in which the cake is wrapped, sleep on it yourself as before for three consecutive nights, and if you should then happen to dream of one of the names therein written, you are certain to marry him.[5] In Hull, folk-lore somewhat varies the receipt. Take the blade-bone of a rabbit, stick nine pins in it, and then put it under your pillow, when you will be sure to see the object of your affections. At Burnley, during a marriage-feast, a wedding-ring is put into the posset, and after serving it out the unmarried person whose cup contains the ring will be the first of the company to be married. Sometimes, too, a cake is made into which a wedding-ring and a sixpence are put. When the company are about to retire, the cake is broken and distributed among the unmarried ladies. She who finds the ring in her portion of cake will shortly be married, but she who gets the sixpence will infallibly die an old maid. Perhaps your affections are still disengaged, but you wish to bestow them on one who will return like for like. In this case there are plenty of wishing-chairs, wishing-gates, and so forth, scattered through the country. A wish breathed near them, and kept secret, will sooner or later have its fulfilment. But there is no need to travel to the Lake country or to Finchale Priory, near Durham (where is a wishing-chair); if you see a piece of old iron or a horseshoe on your path, take it up, spit on it, and throw it over your left shoulder, framing a wish at the same time. Keep this wish a secret, and it will come to pass in due time. If you meet a piebald horse, nothing can be more lucky; utter your wish, and whatever it may be you will have it before the week be out. In Cleveland, the following method of divining whether a girl will be married or not is resorted to. Take a tumbler of water from a stream which runs southward; borrow the wedding-ring of some gudewife and suspend it by a hair of your head over the glass of water, holding the hair between the finger and thumb. If the ring hit against the side of the glass, the holder will die an old maid; if it turn quickly round, she will be married once; if slowly, twice. Should the ring strike the side of the glass more than three times after the holder has pronounced the name of her lover, there will be a lengthy courtship and nothing more; “she will be courted to dead,” as they say in Lincolnshire; if less frequently, the affair will be broken off, and if there is no striking at all it will never come on.[6] Or if you look at the first new moon of the year through a silk handkerchief which has never been washed, as many moons as you see through it (the threads multiplying the vision), so many years must pass before your marriage.