On the other hand, it was customary in the North of England to rub a young woman with pease-straw should her lover prove unfaithful: 

  “If you meet a bonnie lassie,
    Gie her a kiss and let her gae;
  If you meet a dirty hussey,
    Fie, gae rub her o’er wi’ strae!”

From an old Spanish proverb it would seem that the rosemary has long been considered as in some way connected with love: 

  “Who passeth by the rosemarie
    And careth not to take a spraye,
  For woman’s love no care has he,
    Nor shall he though he live for aye.”

Of flowers and plants employed as love-charms on certain festivals may be noticed the bay, rosebud, and the hempseed on St. Valentine’s Day, nuts on St. Mark’s Eve, and the St. John’s wort on Midsummer Eve.

In Denmark[1] many an anxious lover places the St. John’s wort between the beams under the roof for the purpose of divination, the usual custom being to put one plant for herself and another for her sweetheart.  Should these grow together, it is an omen of an approaching wedding.  In Brittany young people prove the good faith of their lovers by a pretty ceremony.  On St. John’s Eve, the men, wearing bunches of green wheat ears, and the women decorated with flax blossoms, assemble round an old historic stone and place upon it their wreaths.  Should these remain fresh for some time after, the lovers represented by them are to be united; but should they wither and die away, it is a certain proof that the love will as rapidly disappear.  Again, in Sicily it is customary for young women to throw from their windows an apple into the street, which, should a woman pick up, it is a sign that the girl will not be married during the year.  Sometimes it happens that the apple is not touched, a circumstance which indicates that the young lady, when married, will ere long be a widow.  On this festival, too, the orpine or livelong has long been in request, popularly known as “Midsummer men,” whereas in Italy the house-leek is in demand.  The moss-rose, again, in years gone by, was plucked, with sundry formalities, on Midsummer Eve for love-divination, an allusion to which mode of forecasting the future, as practised in our own country, occurs in the poem of “The Cottage Girl:” 

  “The moss-rose that, at fall of dew,
  Ere eve its duskier curtain drew,
  Was freshly gathered from its stem,
  She values as the ruby gem;
  And, guarded from the piercing air,
  With all an anxious lover’s care,
  She bids it, for her shepherd’s sake,
  Awake the New Year’s frolic wake: 
  When faded in its altered hue,
  She reads—­the rustic is untrue! 
  But if its leaves the crimson paint,
  Her sick’ning hopes no longer faint;
  The rose upon her bosom worn,
  She meets him at the peep of morn.”

On the Continent the rose is still thought to possess mystic virtues in love matters, as in Thuringia, where girls foretell their future by means of rose-leaves.