"And soon as the young maid her love-knot tied, With noiseless tread, To her chamber she sped, Where the sceptral moon her white beams shed: 'Bloom here, bloom here, thou plant of power, To deck the young bride in her bridal hour!' But it droop'd its head, that plant of power, And died the mute death of the voiceless flower; And a wither'd wreath on the ground it lay, More meet for a burial than a bridal day. And when a year was passed away, All pale on her bier the young maid lay; And the glow-worm came With its silvery flame, And sparkled and shone Through the night of St. John, And they closed the cold grave o'er the maid's cold clay." We gather from Thorpe's "Northern Mythology," that in Sweden it was the practice to place under the head of a youth or maiden nine kinds of flowers, with a full belief that they would dream of their sweethearts. In England, in past times, the moss-rose was plucked with considerable ceremony on this eve for love divinations. Says the writer of a poem entitled "The Cottage Girl":-- "The moss-rose that, at fall of dew, Ere eve its duskier curtain drew, Was freshly gathered from its stem, She values as the ruby gem; And, guarded from the piercing air, With all an anxious lover's care, She bids it, for her shepherd's sake, Await the New Year's frolic wake: When faded in its altered hue, She reads--the rustic is untrue! But if its leaves the crimson paint, Her sick'ning hopes no longer faint; The rose upon her bosom worn, She meets him at the peep of morn, And lo! her lips with kisses prest, He plucks it from her panting breast." "On the continent," says Dyer, in his "Folk-Lore of Plants," "the rose is still thought to possess mystic virtues in love matters, as in Thuringia, where the girls foretell their future by means of rose leaves." It appears from a contributor to Chambers's "Book of Days," that there was brought some time ago under the notice of the Society of Antiquarians a curious little ring, which had been found in a ploughed field near Cawood, Yorkshire. It was inferred from its style and inscription to belong to the fifteenth century. The device consisted of two orpine plants joined by a true-love knot, with this motto above: _Ma fiancée velt_, _i.e._, "My sweetheart is willing or desirous." We are told that the stalks of the plants were bent to each other, in token that the parties represented by them were to come together in marriage. The motto under the ring was _Joye l'amour feu_. It is supposed that it was originally made for some lover to give to his mistress on Midsummer Eve, as the orpine plant is connected with that time. The dumb cake is another item of Midsummer folk-lore:-- "Two make it, Two bake it, Two break it;"