The Dorset writer W. Barnes remembered the girls of his childhood stopping while they gathered flowers in the meadows to pull the petals off a large daisy one at a time. With each petal they said the next word of a short list of possible husbands. Whichever came up with the last petal was taken, quite seriously, to be the kind of man she would marry.
Rich Man, Poor Man
Printed under 8 October · Dorset
Lore and belief
plucking a large daisy, pull off the petals one by one, repeating at the same time the words "Rich man, poor man, farmer, ploughman, thief;"
From Hone's Year Book, cols. 1175-1176. Read the original
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