The dumb cake

A correspondent near Peterborough told Hone that girls in his district still made the dumb cake on St Mark’s Eve. No more than three worked together in silence, and at midnight each ate a piece and walked backwards up to bed without a word, when those who were to marry would see their sweetheart’s likeness chasing them. Other girls ate an egg yolk in silence and filled the shell with salt. At Helpston an odd character called Ben Barr, known as the prophet, watched the church porch every year and claimed to know who in the villages round would marry or die.