A shorter form of these lines is recited in Wicklow by girls on Hallow Eve, while pulling the plant; "a person using the invocation was obliged to retire for the night without speaking."[1] Mr. Halliwell[2] says: "An ounce of yarrow, sewed up in flannel, must be placed under your pillow when you go to bed, and, having repeated the following words, the required dream [of a future husband] will be realised:
Thy true name it is yarrow;
Now who my bosom friend must be,
Pray tell thou me to-morrow."
It does not seem quite clear from the context whether this is an Eastern Counties custom.
Having said so much about yarrow, two other notes may be added. The gathering of the plant with an incantation was one of the charges against one Elspeth Keoch, on her trial for witchcraft in March, 1616. It was alleged that she had plucked "ane herb called melefour"—in which name we see a modification of milfoil, another name of the plant,—sitting on her right knee, and pulling it "betwixt the midfinger and thombe, and saying of In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti." By the plant so gathered she was enabled to cure distemper and to impart the faculty of prediction. There is no doubt that the yarrow was the plant referred to, as the "melefour" is said to be the herb "quhilk causis the nose bleed."
Mr. E. P. Shirley[3] speaks of having been engaged in an important land case, when he "received, in a very secret and mysterious manner, a little packet from an old woman,…with an assurance that if I would keep it it would assuredly bring me luck." Success attended his efforts; and the packet, on being opened, was found to contain some dried yarrow, of which the old woman said "that it was the first herb our Saviour put in His hand when a child, and that therefore," she added, "to those who were by tradition acquainted with that fact, it would certainly bring luck."
- ↑ Irish Folk-Lore: by "Lageniensis." (1870).
- ↑ Popular Rhymes, p. 223.
- ↑ Notes and Queries, 4th series, x. 24.
