The even ash-leaf in my left hand, The first man I meet shall be my husband. The even ash-leaf in my glove, The first I meet shall be my love. The even ash-leaf in my breast, The first man I meet’s whom I love best. Even ash, even ash, I pluck thee, This night my true love for to see. Find even ash or four-leaved clover, An’ you’ll see your true love before the day’s over. The color in which a girl dresses is important, not only during courtship, but after marriage. Those dressed in blue Have lovers true; In green and white Forsaken quite. Green, being sacred to the fairies, is a most unlucky hue. The “little folk” will undoubtedly resent the insult should any one dress in their color. Mr. Henderson[10] has known mothers in the south of England absolutely forbid it to their daughters, and avoid it in the furniture of their houses. Peter Bell’s sixth wife could not have been more inauspiciously dressed when she— Put on her gown of green, To leave her mother at sixteen, And follow Peter Bell. And nothing green must make its appearance at a Scotch wedding. Kale and other green vegetables are rigidly excluded from the wedding-dinner. Jealousy has ever green eyes, and green grows the grass on Love’s grave. Some omens may be obtained by the single at a wedding-feast. The bride in the North Country cuts a cheese (as in more fashionable regions she is the first to help the wedding-cake), and he who can secure the first piece that she cuts will insure happiness in his married life. If the “best man” does not secure the knife he will indeed be unfortunate. The maidens try to possess themselves of a “shaping” of the wedding-dress for use in certain divinations concerning their future husbands.[11] In all ages and all parts of our island maidens have resorted to omens drawn from flowers respecting their sweethearts. Holly, ribwort, plantain, black centaury, yarrow, and a multitude more possess a great reputation in love matters. The lover must generally sleep on some one of these and repeat a charm, when pleasant dreams and faithful indications of a suitor will follow. “The last summer, on the day of St. John the Baptist, 1694,” says Aubrey, “I accidentally was walking in the pasture behind Montague House; it was twelve o’clock. I saw there about two or three and twenty young women, most of them well habited, on their knees very busy, as if they had been weeding. I could not presently learn what the matter was; at last a young man told me that they were looking for a coal under the root of a plantain, to put under their head that night, and they should dream who would be their husbands. It was to be sought for that day and hour.”[12]