Sometimes the pips are placed in the fire, when the children, as they anxiously watch the effect, exclaim:
“If you love me, pop and fly;
If you hate me, lay and die.”
The pimpernel, called the poor man’s weather-glass, is often apostrophised as follows:
“Pimpernel, pimpernel, tell me true,
Whether the weather be fine or no.
No heart can think, no tongue can tell,
The virtues of the pimpernel.”
A ball consisting of cowslip blossoms tied in a globular form called a “tissty-tossty,” is often used by children as a means of divining their future, when the following lines are repeated whilst they play with it:
“Tissty-tossty, tell me true,
Who shall I be married to?
The names of A. B. C., &c., are mentioned until the ball, which is being tossed about, drops. And again:
“Tissty-tossty, four and foarty,
How many years shall I live hearty?”
The numbers one, two, three, four, &c., &c., are called out until the ball drops as before.
In addition to pretending to tell the time by blowing off the seeds of the dandelion—each puff counting as an hour—children, and especially girls, seek to divine their future prospects of marriage by pulling off the petals of a flower or a flowering stalk of grass, whilst repeating some variant of the well-known lines:
“Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor,
rich man, poor man, beggarman [or gentleman], thief.”
The following lines were often used by children in the endeavour to charm snails out of their holes:
“Snail, snail, come out of your hole,
Or else I’ll beat you so black as a coal.”
