If this latter ceremony be carefully carried out, the desired one may be looked for at midnight near the right half.

He further tells us that in the Erzgebirge, the maiden, having slept on St.
Andrew's, or Christmas, night with an apple under her pillow, "takes her stand with it in her hand on the next festival of the Church thereafter; and the first man whom she sees, other than a relative, will become her husband." Again, in Bohemia, on Christmas Eve, there is a pretty practice for young people to fix coloured wax-lights in the shells of the first nuts they have opened that day, and to float them in water, after silently assigning to each the name of some fancied wooer.

He whose little barque is the first to approach the girl will be her future husband; but, on the other hand, should an unwelcome suitor seem likely to be the first, she blows against it, and so, by impeding its progress, allows the favoured barque to win.
In very early times flowers were mcuh in request as love-philtres, various allusions to which occur in the literature of most ages.

Thus, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Oberon tells Puck to place a pansy on the eyes of Titania, in order that, on awaking, she may fall in love with the first object she encounters.

Gerarde speaks of the carrot as "serving for love matters," and adds that the root of the wild species is more effectual than that of the garden.