ing of the cake, and in drawing it out of the oven. The mystic viand must next be divided into two equal portions, and each girl, taking her share, is to carry it upstairs, walking backwards all the time, and finally eat it and jump into bed. A damsel who duly fulfils all these conditions, and has also kept her thoughts all the day fixed on her ideal of a husband, may confidently expect to see her future partner in her dreams.
“Dumb cake” is, or has been, made as far south as Norfolk. A friend tells me that his mother when a girl with another young companion duly made their dumb cake in perfect silence, walked to their bed backwards, laid their stockings and garters crosswise, and their shoes “going and coming,” and then sitting up in bed began to eat the cakes, which were small enough, having been made in thimbles. Still the lady in question could not get through it, owing to its excessive saltness, and with her mouth full of the compound she exclaimed, “I can’t eat it!” This of course broke the spell, and her friend was much annoyed.
The prescribed formula is somewhat different in Northumberland. There a number of girls, after a day’s silence and fasting, will boil eggs, one apiece, extract the yolk, fill the cavity with salt, and eat the egg, shell and all, and then walk backwards, uttering this invocation to the saint:
Sweet St. Agnes, work thy fast,
If ever I be to marry man,
Or man be to marry me,
I hope him this night to see.
Or,
Fair St. Agnes, play thy part,
And send to me my own sweetheart,
Not in his best or worst array,
But in the clothes of every day,
That to-morrow I may him ken,
From among all other men.
A raw red herring, swallowed bones and all, is said to be equally efficacious, and doubtless is very provocative of dreams and visions. Northumbrian swains sometimes adopt this plan to get a glimpse of their future wives.
