These mystic observances smack of a far-distant past, and the modern water-finder appears to have discarded them. His practice is to cut a forked branch about eighteen inches in length from any convenient hazel or white-thorn bush, and grasping the prongs very firmly between the thumb and two first fingers of each hand, the joint being held downwards, he walks over the ground where it is desired to find water. If he approaches a hidden spring, the joint will begin to rise against his will, and when he has reached it, will make a complete half revolution, breaking or bending the twigs held in his hands, until the joint is uppermost. The depth of the spring is estimated by the force with which the rod is repelled from it. The mental exhaustion of the operator after a successful operation is said to be considerable. In an old volume of the _Quarterly Review_ (No. 44) an account is given of a certain Lady Noel who was skilful in the use of the divining-rod. She used a thin forked hazel-twig, which immediately bent when she came over the underground spring, its motion being more or less rapid as she approached or withdrew from the spot. “When just over it the twig turned so quick as to snap, breaking near the fingers, which by pressing it were indented and heated and almost blistered. A degree of agitation was also visible in her face.” Many of the superstitious practices that still survive in remote villages are no doubt of the same ancestry as the divining-rod. In the valley of Lanzo in Piedmont, lovers in doubt whether to marry consult the oracle in the form of a herb called _concordia_, the root of which is shaped like two hands, each with its five fingers. If the herb they find has the hands conjoined, the omen is favourable; but unfavourable if the hands point different ways.[251] The following naïve recital is quoted in Brand’s antiquities:—“Last Friday was Valentine’s day, and the night before I got five bay-leaves, and pinned four of them to the four corners of my pillow, and the fifth to the middle; and then, if I dreamt of my sweetheart, Betty said we should be married before the year was out.”[252] This belief in the magical power of certain leaves is enshrined in many jingles, still found in the rustic formulary, such as— The even ash-leaf in my glove The first I meet shall be my love;[253] or Find even ash or four-leaved clover And you’ll see your true love before the day’s over.[254] In old days on St. Valentine’s eve many a rustic maid has sprinkled bay-leaves with rose-water and laid them across her pillow, and then lying down in a clean night-gown, turned wrong side out, has softly recited— Good Valentine, be kind to me, In dreams let me my true love see;[255] or, if she were a Staffordshire lass, she probably preferred St. Thomas’s eve, and having placed a sprig of evergreen under her pillow, sighed— Good St. Thomas, stand by my bed And tell me when I shall be wed.[256]