The knotweed love charm

Hone printed for late May John Clare’s lines on the charms Northamptonshire village girls tried when out of the old women’s hearing. Besides tying love-knots of oat or wheat blades, a girl would pull the little blossom threads from the button heads of the knotweed and put the husk in her bosom. If she had guessed rightly which young man loved her, it was said to bloom again with a second flower within the hour. In the same lines the quail calling wet my foot from the wheat was taken as a sign of rain.