Copy 1, Volume 1

Observations on the popular antiquities of Great Britain: chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar and provincial customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand.

  • John Brand
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the popular antiquities of Great Britain: chiefly illustrating the origin of our vulgar and provincial customs, ceremonies, and superstitions / by John Brand. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    61/570 page 35
    “ Saint Agnes Day comes by and by, When pretty maids do fast to try Their sweethearts in their dreams to see, Or know who shall their husbands be. But some when married all is ore, And they desire to dream no more, Or, if they must have these extreams, Wish all their sufferings were but dreams.” And in the same periodical for the previous year, 1/33, we have a similar account: — “ Tho’ Christmas pleasure now is gone, St. Agnes’ Fast is coming on ; When maids who fain would married be, Do fast their sweethearts for to see. This year it has come so about, That Sunday shoves St. Agnes out: But lovers who would fortunes tell, May find her here, and that’s as well.”] This is called fasting St. Agnes’s Fast. The following lines of Ben Jonson allude to this :—■ And on sweet St. Anna’s night Please you with the promis’d sight, Some of husbands, some of lovers, Which an empty dream discovers. Aubrey, in bis Miscellanies, p. 136, directs that, “ Upon St. Agnes’s Night, you take a row of pins, and pull out every one, one after another, saying a paternoster, sticking a pin in your sleeve, and you will dream of him or her you shall marry.”1 Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy (ed. 1660, p. 538), speaks of Maids fasting on St. Agnes's Eve, to know who shall be their first husband. In Cupid’s Whirligig, 1616, iii. 1, Pag says, “ I could find in my heart to pray nine times 1 I find the subsequent curious passage concerning St. Agnes, in the Portiforium seu Breviarium Ecclesise Sarisburiensis, fol. Par. 1556. Pars. Hyemalis: “ Cumque interrogasset prseses quis esset sponsus de cujus se Agnes potestate gloriabatur, exstitit quidam ex parasitis qui diceret hanc Christianam esse ab infantia, et magicis artibus ita occupatam, ut dicatur sponsum suum Christum esse. R. Jam corpus ejus corpori meo sociatum est, et sanguis ejus ornavit genas meas. Cujus mater Virgo est, cujus pater feminam nescit. Ipsi sum desponsata cui angeli serviunt, cujus pulchritudinem Sol et Luna mirantur, cujus mater virgo.”
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