a third put it under their pillows, and this was all done without a word being spoken. If this was faithfully carried out it was believed that the diviners would dream of the men they loved. Sowing hempseed on this eve was once a general custom. We have noted particulars of the ceremony as carried out at Ashbourne, Derbyshire. At this village, when a young maiden wished to discover who would be her future husband, she repaired to the churchyard, and as the clock struck the witching hour of midnight, she commenced running round the church, continually repeating the following lines:-- "I sow hempseed, hempseed I sow; He that loves me best Come after me and mow." After going round the church a dozen times without stopping, her lover was said to appear and follow her. The closing scene of this spell is well described in a poem by W. T. Moncrieff:-- "Ah! a step. Some one follows. Oh, dare I look back? Should the omen be adverse, how would my heart writhe. Love, brace up my sinews! Who treads on my track? 'Tis he, 'tis the loved one; he comes with the scythe, He mows what I've sown; bound, my heart, and be blithe. On Midsummer Eve the glad omen is won, Then hail to thy mystical virgil, St. John." From the charms of love let us briefly turn to a superstition relating to death. At one time it was believed, and in some country districts the superstition may yet linger, that anyone fasting during the evening, and then sitting at midnight in the church porch, would see the spirits of those destined to die that year come and knock at the church door. The ghosts were supposed to come in the same succession as the persons were doomed to pass away. A pleasing old custom long survived in Craven, Yorkshire, and other parts of the North of England, of new settlers in the town or village, on the first Midsummer Eve after their arrival, to set out before their doors a plentiful repast of cold beef, bread, cheese, and ale. We are told that neighbours who wished to cultivate their acquaintance sat down and partook of their hospitality, and thus "eat and drunk themselves into intimacy." Hone's "Every Day Book" has a note of this custom being observed at Ripon. "It was a popular superstition," wrote Grose, "that if any unmarried woman fasted on Midsummer Eve, and at midnight laid a clean cloth with bread, cheese, and ale, and then sat down as if going to eat, the street door being left open, the person whom she was afterwards to marry would come into the room and drink to her, bowing; and after filling a glass would leave the table, and, making another bow, retire." Harvest Home.