My Canadian Brides novel turns on a betrothal gone wrong. To celebrate May, I leave Canada and travel to England, and the serious search for a mate in the eighteenth century.
Folklore abounds in the villages of England around the
single girl’s search for a husband—as in the eighteenth century marriage was
what most young women had to look forward to, or they’d be ridiculed and
regulated to spinsters, farmed out as governesses, or forced to live on the
charity of their family.
Most of these search-for-true-love customs revolved around
the seasons.
At the ruined Abbey of Cerne Abbas in Dorsetshire, girls
flocked around the wishing-well in all seasons. To obtain their heart’s desire,
they’d pluck a leaf from a nearby laurel bush, make a cup of it, dip this in
the well, then turn and face the church. The girl would then “wish” for
presumably a man she already has in mind, but must keep this wish a secret or
it wouldn’t come true.
Other customs included, in Somersetshire on May Day Eve or
St. John’s Eve, a lass putting a snail on a pewter plate. As the snail slithered
across the plate it would mark out the future husband’s initials.
On another ritual to this end, writer Daniel Defoe remarked
by saying: “I hope that the next twenty-ninth of June, which is St. John the
Baptist’s Day, I shall not see the pastures adjacent to the metropolis thronged
as they were the last year with well-dressed young ladies crawling up and down upon
their knees as if they were a parcel of weeders, when all the business is to
hunt superstitiously after a coal under the root of a plantain to put under
their heads that night that they may dream who should be their husbands.”
Throwing an apple peel over the left shoulder was also
employed in the hopes the paring would fall into the shape of the future
husband’s initials. When done on St. Simon and St. Jude’s Day, the girls would
recite the following rhyme as they tossed the peel: St. Simon and St. Jude, on you I intrude, By this paring I hold to
discover, without any delay please tell me this day, the first letter of him,
my true lover.
On the eve of St. Mary Magdalene’s Day, a spring of rosemary
would be dipped into a mixture of wine, rum, gin, vinegar, and water. The
girls, who must be under twenty-one, fastened the sprigs to their gowns, drink
three sips of the concoction, then would go to sleep in silence and dream of
future husbands.
At All Hallows Eve, a girl going out alone might meet her true
lover. One tale has it that a young servant-maid who went out for this purpose
encountered her master coming home from market instead of a single boy. She ran
home to tell her mistress, who was already ill. The mistress implored the maid
to be kind to her children, then this wife died. Later on, the master did marry
his serving-maid.
Myths and customs were long a part of village life when it
came to match-making.
In my novel, On a
Stormy Primeval shore, which takes place in eighteenth-century Canada, Amelia
is slated to wed one man (a match made by her father), but refuses him, and through no effort of her own,
the perfect man comes along in the guise of Gilbert, an Acadian trader. A bear
is involved...
In 1784, Amelia
sails to New Brunswick, a land overrun by Loyalists escaping the American
Revolution, to marry a soldier whom she rejects. Acadian Gilbert fights to
preserve his heritage and property—will they find love when events seek to
destroy them?
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For further information on me and my books, please visit my website: www.dianescottlewis.org
