are boiled over the St. John's fire, and eaten dry out of the hollow of the hand. They are thought to be good against all sorts of complaints, and particularly against wounds and bruises.* It is also recommended that children in the measles should be washed with water in which peas have been boiled.†

The use of peas in divination concerning love matters is accounted for by the fact that they are sacred to the patron of marriage. In the Leitmeritzer district of Bohemia the girls go into a field of peas, and make there a garland of five or seven kinds of flowers, all of different hues. This garland they use as a pillow, lying down with their right ear upon it, and then they hear a voice from underground, which tells them what manner of man they are to have for a husband.

In England, when the kitchen-maid shells green peas, if she chance to find a pod with nine peas she hangs it over the kitchen door, and the first rustic who comes in is infallibly to be her husband, or at least her sweetheart. The village girls in Hertfordshire lay the pod with nine peas under a gate, and believe they will have for husband the first man that passes through, or one whose christian name and

* Mannhardt, p. 201.

+ Ibid. 197. Reinsberg-Düringsfeld, p. 312.

PEASCOD WOOING.

301

surname have the same initials as his. A Cumbrian girl, when her lover proves unfaithful, is, by way of consolation, rubbed with pea-straw by the neighbouring lads; and when a Cumbrian youth loses his sweetheart by marriage with a rival, the same sort of comfort is administered to him by the lasses of the village.*

"Winter time for shoeing, peascod time for wooing," is an old proverb found by Sir Henry Ellis in a MS. Devon glossary. A peascod wooing was performed, according to Brand, " by selecting one growing on the stem, snatching it away quickly, and, if the good omen of the peas remaining in the husk were preserved, then presenting it to the lady of their choice." An example of this practice is tenderly recounted by Touchstone:

"I remember when I was in love, I broke my sword upon a stone, and bade him take that for coming a-night to Jane Smile; and I remember the kissing of her batler, and the cow's dugs that her pretty chapped hands had milked; and I remember the wooing of a peascod instead of her, from whom I took two cods, and giving her them again said, with weeping tears, Wear these for my sake.""

*

Brand, ii. 99.