In Scotland on Shrove Tuesday a national dish called “crowdie,” composed of oatmeal and water with milk, is largely consumed, and lovers can always tell their chances of being married by putting into the porringer a ring. The finder of this in his or her portion will without fail be married sooner than any one else in the company. Onions, curiously enough, figure in many superstitions connected with marriage—why, we have no idea. It might be ungallantly suggested that it is from their supposed virtue to produce tears, or from wearing many faces, as it were, under one hood. While speaking of these unsavory vegetables, we are reminded of a passage in Luther’s “Table Talk”: “Upon the eve of Christmas Day the women run about and strike a swinish hour” (whatever this may mean): “if a great hog grunts, it decides that the future husband will be an old man; if a small one, a young man,”[18] The orpine is another magical plant in love incantations. It must be used on Midsummer Eve, and is useful to inform a maiden whether her lover is true or false. It must be stuck up in her room, and the desired information is obtained by watching whether it bends to the right or the left. Hemp-seed, sown on that evening, also possesses marvellous efficacy. One of the young ladies mentioned above, who sewed bay leaves on her pillow, and had the felicity of seeing Mr. Blossom in consequence, writes, “The same night, exactly at twelve o’clock, I planted hemp-seed in our back yard, and said to myself, ‘Hemp seed I sow, hemp-seed I hoe, and he that is my true love come after me and mow!’ Will you believe it? I looked back and saw him behind me, as plain as eyes could see him.” And she adds, as another wrinkle to her sex, “Our maid Betty tells me that if I go backwards, without speaking a word, into the garden upon Midsummer Eve, and gather a rose and keep it in a clean sheet of paper without looking at it till Christmas Day, it will be as fresh as in June; and if I then stick it in my bosom, he that is to be my husband will come and take it out.” Whatever be the virtue of Betty’s recipe, it would at all events teach a lover patience. Mr. Henderson supplies two timely cautions from Border folk-lore. A girl can “scarcely do a worse thing than boil a dish-clout in her crock.” She will be sure, in consequence, to lose all her lovers, or, in Scotch phrase, “boil all her lads awa’;” “and in Durham it is believed that if you put milk in your tea before sugar, you lose your sweetheart,”[19] We may add that unless a girl fasts on St. Catherine’s Day (Nov. 25) she will never have a good husband. Nothing can be luckier for either bachelor or girl than to be placed inadvertently at some social gathering between a man and his wife. The person so seated will be married before the year is out.