All charms of this nature are supposed to possess peculiar power if tried on St. Valentine’s day, Christmas Eve, or Hallowe’en. Curious it is that on a day dedicated to All the Saints in the Calendar, evil spirits, fairies, and the like are supposed to be holding a sort of magic revel unchecked, or that they should be thought to be better disposed to gratify the desires of inquisitive mortals on this day than on another. At any rate, calendar or no calendar, St. Matrimony is the patron saint of Hallowe’en. Among the many methods of divination employed, a favorite one was to drop melted lead into a bowl of water, though any other sort of vessel would do as well, and whatever form the lead might take would signify the occupation of your future husband. Or to go out of doors in the dark, with a ball of yarn, and unwind it until some one should begin winding it at the unwound end. At this trial, the expected often happened, as the enamored swain would seldom fail to be on the watch for his sweetheart to appear. So also the white of an egg dropped in water, and set in the sun, was supposed to take on the form of some object, such as a ship under full sail, indicating that your husband would be a sailor. Burning the nuts is perhaps the most popular mode of trying conclusions with fate, as it certainly is the most mirth-provoking. On this interesting occasion, lads and lassies arrange themselves in a circle before a blazing wood fire, on the hearth. Nuts are produced. Each person, after naming his or her nut, puts it upon the glowing coals, with the unspoken invocation:-- “If he loves me, pop and fly, If he hates me, live and die.” The poet Gay turns this somewhat differently, but it is not our affair to reconcile conflicting presages. He sings:-- “Two hazel nuts I threw into the flame, And to each nut I gave a sweetheart’s name, This with the loudest bounce me sore amazed, That in a flame of brightest color blazed: As blazed the nut so may the passions grow, For ‘twas thy nut that did so brightly glow.” A still different rendering is given by Burns. According to him each questioner of the charm names two nuts, one for himself, one for his sweetheart, presumably the mode practised in Scotland in his time:-- “Jean slips in twa wi’ tentie e’e; Wha ’twas, she wadna tell; But this is Jock, an’ this is me, She says in to hersel’: He blaz’d o’er her, an’ she owre him, As they wad never mair part; ’Till, fuff! he started up the lum, An’ Jean had e’en a sair heart To see’t that night.” Popping corn sometimes takes the place of burning the nuts. The spoken invocation is then “Pit, put, turn inside out!”