our first Sunday morning here we took a walk out of the village, and as we were returning I noticed a man coming out of a house. I seemed to know the place quite well, though I had never been there before. All at once I knew it was what I had seen in the glass egg—three houses, a shed, blue coat and brass buttons. I pulled my sister’s arm and said, ‘That’s my husband,’ while he turned down a road and walked out of our sight. We walked straight to our friend’s house, and there we found the very man we had been talking about. He turned out to be a member of the same congregation as our friend, so we all went to chapel together, and in three months from that day I was married.”
The maidens in Durham have their own way of testing their lovers’ fidelity. They will take an apple-pip, and, naming the lover, put the pip in the fire. If it makes a noise as it bursts with the heat, she is assured of his affection; if it burns away silently, she will be convinced that he has no true regard for her.
As to wishing, we have wishing-chairs here and there through the country. There is one at Finchale Priory, near Durham; and he who seats himself in it, breathes a wish, and tells no one what it is, will receive it. But there is an easier mode of gaining what one desires. If you see a horseshoe, or piece of old iron, on your path, take it up, spit on it, and throw it over your left shoulder, framing your wish at the same time; keep the wish secret, and you will have it in time. Or, on meeting a piebald horse, utter your wish, and whatever it may be you will have it before the week is out.
In Cleveland, girls will resort to the following way of divining whether they will be married or no. Take a tumbler of “south running water,” that is, water from a stream which flows southwards; borrow the wedding-ring of some gudewife, and suspend it by a hair of one’s head over the glass of water, holding the hair between the finger and thumb. If the ring hit against the side of the glass the holder of it will die an old maid; if it turn quickly round she will be married once—if slowly, twice. This is practised in Durham “with a difference.” A shilling is used
