times he’s slow a-coming, and if I stick a candle-end full o’ pins it always fetches him.” A member of the family certifies that John was thus duly fetched from Ferryhill, a distance of six miles, and pretty often too.
It is remarkable that a somewhat similar use of candles and pins prevailed in the remote county of Buckingham at no very distant date. My friend Miss Young has given me the following particulars on the subject, which she learned from her nurse, an old servant still in the family. Buckinghamshire damsels desirous to see their lovers would stick two pins across through the candle they were burning, taking care that the pins passed through the wick. While doing this they recited the following verse:—
It’s not this candle alone I stick,
But A. B. heart I mean to prick;
Whether he be asleep or awake,
I’d have him come to me and speak.
By the time the candle burned down to the pins and went out, the lover would be certain to present himself.
The nurse declared that she knew three instances in which this spell had been practised, and that successfully, so far as the appearance of the lover was concerned; but only one of the girls was married to the man in question, and her after-life was most unhappy. Of the other two, one lost her sweetheart immediately. He came to her that evening because he could not help himself, but he came in a very ill-humour, declaring that he knew the girl “had been about some devilme’nt or other.” “No tongue,” he said, “could tell what she had made him suffer,” and he never would have another word to say to her from that hour.[1]
- ↑ On reading this narration my friend the late Canon Humble wrote: “A servant in our family at Durham used to stick pins in the candle in the same manner, only I believe two persons were to stick each a pin, and if both remained in the wick after the candle had burnt below the place in which they were inserted the lovers of both would appear. If a pin dropped out the lover was faithless. If on sticking in the pin “swealing” began in the candle the lover was sure not to come that night. One person might practise this charm alone, but two were preferred. I do not believe the pins were always crossed. They were sometimes placed on opposite sides but not quite in a line.
