{"content":[{"text":"Marriage Superstitions and Customs","bbox":{"left":0.16451,"top":0.059133,"width":0.29066000000000003,"height":0.019743000000000004}},{"text":"Young women had many ways of discovering whom their future husband would be, some \n simple but others fraught with fear and spiritual danger. Mollie Harris writes about \n Eynsham girls who made tisty tosty balls from cowslips. They took the heads off the main \n stalk, and bunched them up and tied wool round the middle. They then played Tell me \n True with the ball, tossing it up and chanting:","bbox":{"left":0.16451,"top":0.091808,"width":0.6712210000000001,"height":0.084696}},{"text":"'Tisty, tosty, tell me true,","bbox":{"left":0.40794,"top":0.190443,"width":0.184077,"height":0.019016000000000005}},{"text":"Who shall I be married to.","bbox":{"left":0.403234,"top":0.223548,"width":0.19357600000000008,"height":0.019016000000000005}},{"text":"Tisty, Tosty, cowslip ball,","bbox":{"left":0.403627,"top":0.256578,"width":0.19277799999999995,"height":0.019015999999999977}},{"text":"At my sweetheart's name you'll fall'.","bbox":{"left":0.365979,"top":0.289532,"width":0.26809,"height":0.019015999999999977}},{"text":"Obviously this was a child's game. not to be taken too seriously, but dumb cake and hemp \n seed divinations involved invoking the spirits and were not undertaken lightly. Angelina \n Parker wrote in 'Folklore' (Vol. 21, 1913, p. 79) about dumb cake divination in Long \n Hanborough:","bbox":{"left":0.16451,"top":0.322562,"width":0.6711530000000001,"height":0.06825599999999998}},{"text":"'It must be done on Christmas Eve, and should be carried out in complete silence. First a \n dough cake must be made and placed on the hearthstone, the maker must prick her initials \n on it, the door being carefully left open, as something terrible would happen if the spirit \n came and found it shut. She must then wait in perfect silence till the clock strikes twelve, \n when her future husband will walk in and prick his initials beside hers on the cake, and \n then walk out again. An old lady once told me that a girl in this way brought her future \n husband, who was a soldier, into the room, and in passing through the doorway he broke \n his sword in two. The girl picked up the broken piece and kept it. After she had been \n married to him for some years, in turning out her trunk she came across it, and showed it \n to her husband, and he was so angry that he could hardly forgive her. He told her he \n suffered dreadful agonies during the time she forced him to appear, though he did not then \n know the reason.","bbox":{"left":0.16451,"top":0.404756,"width":0.671422,"height":0.19939099999999998}},{"text":"Alternatively, a girl could go to the churchyard at midnight on Christmas Eve and sow \n hemp seed, reciting:","bbox":{"left":0.16451,"top":0.618085,"width":0.6711400000000001,"height":0.035455000000000014}},{"text":"'Here I sow hemp seed that hemp seed may grow, \n Hoping my true love will come after me and mow'.","bbox":{"left":0.311471,"top":0.667478,"width":0.3772100000000001,"height":0.035455000000000014}},{"text":"The seed immediately grew and the future husband came to mow it with a scythe - \n Christmas Eve was one of the times when the gap between the spirit world and the real \n world narrowed and strange things could happen.","bbox":{"left":0.16451,"top":0.716871,"width":0.671035,"height":0.05189299999999997}},{"text":"A girl who acquired two slices of wedding cake could induce dreams of her future \n husband by putting the slices under her pillow. She had to get into bed backwards and \n recite:","bbox":{"left":0.16451,"top":0.782702,"width":0.671311,"height":0.051895000000000024}},{"text":"'I put this cake under my head \n To dream of the living and not of the dead; \n To dream of the man I shall wed, \n Not in his best or Sunday array, \n But in the clothes of everyday.'","bbox":{"left":0.341568,"top":0.84846,"width":0.316995,"height":0.08469800000000005}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}