constrained to leave this popular custom where I found it.
The fine old church of our country parish has a pretty peal of bells, whose silvery tongues melodiously proclaim to the neighbourhood the various joyful events that break into pleasant ripples the still surface of our usual humdrum existence. The daughter of our chief farmer was married the other day, and, of course, the bells did their best to spread the tidings. The ringers rang when the bride and bridegroom left the church; and the ringers rang when the happy couple drove out of the parish in a chaise and pair for a honeymoon of four days in the great whirling world of London. And the ringers rang at divers times throughout the day, being filled with beer and friendly feeling. And, late in the evening, when the last peal had been rung, the ringers (according to the custom of our country parish) fore-tolled upon the great bell the number of children with which the marriage was to be blessed. This tintinnabular prophecy as to the “hostages to fortune” probably depends—like the gipsy predictions in similar cases—upon the largesse expected to be forth-coming. On this particular occasion, the clapper was made to smite the bell thrice three times. The bride and bridegroom, therefore, know the worst, and can betimes make the needful preparations for the advent of their tuneful nine.
All the young ladies in our country parish, in common with the young lady whom I have just mentioned, are imbued with the same superstitious spirit as their poorer neighbours. That leap-year empowers a young lady to “pop the question” to a young gentleman, is, I believe, a generally received fragment of folk-lore. But, it is the belief of young ladies in our country parish, that leap-year permits them to do something more. I am informed by one of my fair young friends in that romantic village, that if, in any leap-year, she should so far forget herself as to suggest an union between herself and a bachelor acquaintance, who should be uncivil enough to decline her polite proposals, she could, thereupon, demand from him the gift of a new silk dress: but that, to claim this dress with propriety, she must, at the time of asking, be the wearer of a scarlet petticoat; which, or the lower portion of which, she must forthwith exhibit to the gentleman; who thereupon, by the law of leap-year—which is as the law of the Medea and Persians—is compelled to present to the lady a new silk dress, to cover her scarlet petticoat, and assuage her displeasure at his rejection of her proposals.
When my fair young friend told me this bit of feminine folk-lore, I laid it to heart, thinking that it might prove exceedingly useful to me, in putting me on my guard during the forthcoming leap-year. For, I thought within myself, that it was not without a determined significancy, that this young lady, and others in our country parish, had followed the then prevailing fashions (received by us a full twelvemonth after they have been introduced in more civilised places), and had habited themselves in bright scarlet petticoats—which, on a snowy day, and from beneath a looped-up dress, and over a pair of good, sensible legs, shod with good, sensible boots,—made, I can assure you, a great figure in the landscape, and, gleaming warm and sunny, presented to the eye that positive bit of colour which is so valuable to the artist. And I thought it might be reasonably inferred, that the ladies’ law of leap-year was about to be inflicted upon the gentlemen of our country parish and its vicinity, in its most expensive silk-dress form, and that the assumption of these scarlet petticoats was merely the initiatory step to a sterner process.
And hence I thought that—from a careful consideration of the various dangers arising from this feminine folk-lore that would beset me, and all the other bachelors in our country parish, during the next twelvemonth,—I should be inclined to coincide with Mr. Meagles’ opinion of beadles[1], and to consider his advice with regard to those bipeds as worthy of all imitation; and so, when leap-year came, and when I caught sight of a young lady tripping along the road “in full fig,” and displaying a scarlet petticoat, I should consider that I showed the best discretion by turning and running away.
We are great on the subject of the weather in our country parish. In particular are we attached to prognostications of rain. If the salt is damp, we say that we shall soon have wet. If we see a snake gliding and wriggling across the road, we say “there will be rain before long.” If we see the glow-worms shining at night, we say, “we shall have wet ere morning.” If we hear the woodpeckers utter their peculiar, harsh cry, we say, “we shall have a shower soon.” We find our barometers in all these things, and many more; and, for us, the moon “takes up her wondrous tale” chiefly to tell us what sort of weather it will be. We say that “it will be a wet month, when there are two full moons in it.” Intending to burst into immortal verse, but failing at the threshold in our search after a rhyme, we say,
A Saturday’s change, and a Sunday’s full,
Once in seven years is once too soon.
But we are more successful in our rhymes, when we treat of the gardening operations for spring. Then we say,
When elm-leaves are as big as a shilling,
Plant kidney-beans, if to plant ’em you’re willing;
When elm-leaves are as big as a penny,
You must plant kidney-beans, if you mean to have any.
The energy infused into the last line, and the clearness of the advice contained in it, is a sufficient apology for its lengthened metre. In whatever quarter the wind may be on Candlemas-eve, our people say that it will “mainly” remain in that quarter for forty days. Concerning the unhealthiness of the spring season, we say,
March, search; April, try;
May will prove if you live or die.
- ↑ See “Little Dorrit.”
