many an anxious lover places the St. John's wort between
the beams under the roof for the purpose of divination, the usual custom
being to put one plant for herself and another for her sweetheart.
Should these grow together, it is an omen of an approaching wedding. In
Brittany young people prove the good faith of their lovers by a pretty
ceremony. On St. John's Eve, the men, wearing bunches of green wheat
ears, and the women decorated with flax blossoms, assemble round an old
historic stone and place upon it their wreaths. Should these remain
fresh for some time after, the lovers represented by them are to be
united; but should they wither and die away, it is a certain proof that
the love will as rapidly disappear. Again, in Sicily it is customary for
young women to throw from their windows an apple into the street, which,
should a woman pick up, it is a sign that the girl will not be married
during the year. Sometimes it happens that the apple is not touched, a
circumstance which indicates that the young lady, when married, will ere
long be a widow. On this festival, too, the orpine or livelong has long
been in request, popularly known as "Midsummer men," whereas in Italy
the house-leek is in demand. The moss-rose, again, in years gone by, was
plucked, with sundry formalities, on Midsummer Eve for love-divination,
an allusion to which mode of forecasting the future, as practised in our
own country, occurs in the poem of "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,
Awake 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."

On the Continent the rose is still thought to possess mystic virtues in
love matters, as in Thuringia, where girls foretell their future by
means of rose-leaves.

A ceremony belonging to Hallowe'en is observed in Scotland with some
trepidation, and consists in eating an apple before a looking-glass,
when the face of the desired one will be seen. It is thus described
by Burns:

"Wee Jenny to her granny says,
'Will ye gae wi' me, granny?
I'll eat the apple at the g