Romance Customs

Love, courtship and marriage: charms to see a future sweetheart, Valentine customs, wedding ways and the days for divining who you will marry.

76 to 100 of 131 entries

Whit Monday

Folklore from the old calendars

A Midsummer Eve supper for the man she would marry Lore and belief EnglandAn unmarried woman who fasted on Midsummer Eve could lay a clean cloth at midnight with bread, cheese and ale, sit down as if to eat and leave the street door open.
Burnt names and a looking-glass on Midsummer Eve Lore and belief EnglandOn Midsummer Eve lovers wrote their names on a paper at twelve o'clock, burned it, and carefully gathered up the ashes.
Letters in a basin on Midsummer Eve Lore and belief DorsetA Dorset girl who wanted her husband's initial wrote the alphabet on scraps of paper at bedtime and floated them face down in a basin of water.
Midsummer men Lore and belief EnglandOn Midsummer Eve girls set sprigs of orpine in clay on a slate or potsherd and called them Midsummer men.
Shoes in the form of a T Lore and belief DorsetA Dorset man writing for the Year Book said Midsummer Eve was the great night for girls to find out whom they would marry.
The Midsummer rose Lore and belief EnglandAmong the Midsummer Eve charms that a girl in the Connoisseur owned to trying was the rose.
The snail under the basin on St John’s Eve Lore and belief WalesA Welsh girl who put a snail under a basin on St John's Eve expected to find her future husband's name, or at least his initials, traced by its trail in the morning.