"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, 1733, 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.

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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

I find the subsequent curious passage concerning St. Agnes, in the Portiforium seu Breviarium Ecclesiæ Sarisburiensis, fol. Par. 1556. Pars. Hyemalis: "Cumque interrogasset præses 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."

to the moone, and fast three St. Agnes's Eves, so that I might bee sure to have him to my husband."

The following is the account of this festival, as preserved in the Translation of Naogeorgus, f. 46:

"Then commes in place St. Agnes' Day, which here in Germanie
Is not so much esteemde nor kept with such solemnitie:
But in the Popish Court it standes in passing hie degree,
As spring and head of wondrous gaine, and great commoditee.
For in St. Agnes' church upon this day while masse they sing,
Two lambes as white as snowe the nonnes do yearely use to bring
And when the Agnus chaunted is upon the aulter hie,
(For in this thing there hidden is a solemne mysterie)
They offer them. The servants of the pope, when this is done,
Do put them into pasture good till shearing time be come.
Then other wooll they mingle with these holy fleeces twaine,
Wherof, being sponne and drest, are made the pals of passing
gaine.'

A passage not unsimilar occurs in The Present State of the Manners, &c. of France and Italy-in Poetical Epistles to Robert Jephson, Esq., 8vo. Lond. 1794, from Rome, February, 14, 1793, p. 58.

St. Agnes's Shrine.

"Where each pretty Ba-lamb most gayly appears,
With ribands stuck round on its tail and its ears;
On gold fringed cushions they're stretch'd out to eat,
And piously ba, and to church-musick bleat;
Yet to me they seem'd crying-alack, and alas!
What's all this white damask to daisies and grass!
Then they're brought to the pope, and with transport
they're kiss'd,

And receive consecration from Sanctity's fist:

To chaste nuns he consigns them, instead of their dams,
And orders the friars to keep them from rams."

1 ["There are two remarkable days this month, and both on the getting hand, which our customers like best. There is St. Agnes's Fast, for the maids to get sweethearts, which happens the twenty-first day; and Term begins on the twenty-third day, for the lawyers to get money, but it is with a difference, and the lawyers in this, as indeed in most other cases, have the advantage. The maids, if they do undergo the mortification of fasting, expect nothing but a dream for their labour; only if they dream of the man that afterwards they are married to, it makes amends. But the lawyer is not buoy'd up with dreams, for he is awake, and will have the money, ipso facto, before he speaks; and if the client lose both cause and money, it will make him awake too."-Poor Robin, 1733.]

[The present rural address to the saint, as still heard in Durham, is as follows :

"Fair Saint Agnes, play thy part,

And send to me my own sweetheart,
Not in his best nor worst array,
But in the clothes he wears every day;
That to-morrow I may him ken,
From among all other men."

A curious old chap-book, called Mother Bunch's Closet newly Broke Open, has several notices of the St. Agnes divination:-"On that day thou must be sure that no man salute thee, nor kiss thee; I mean neither man, woman, nor child, must kiss thy lips on that day; and then, at night, before thou goest into thy bed, thou must be sure to put on a clean shift, and the best thou hast, then the better thou mayst speed. And when thou liest down, lay thy right hand under thy head, saying these words, Now the god of Love send me my desire; make sure to sleep as soon as thou canst, and thou shalt be sure to dream of him who shall be thy husband, and see him stand before thee, and thou wilt take great notice of him and his complexion, and, if he offers to salute thee, do not deny him." And again, in the same tract, "There is, in January, a day called Saint Agnes' Day. It is always the one and twentieth of that month. This Saint Agnes had a great favour for young men and maids, and will bring unto their bedside, at night, their sweethearts, if they follow this rule as I shall declare unto thee. Upon this day thou must be sure to keep a true fast, for thou must not eat or drink all that day, nor at night; neither let any man, woman, or child kiss thee that day; and thou must be sure, at night, when thou goest to bed, to put on a clean shift, and the best thou hast the better thou mayst speed; and thou must have clean cloaths on thy head, for St. Agnes does love to see clean cloaths when she comes; and when thou liest down on thy back as streight as thou canst, and both thy hands are laid underneath thy head, then say,—

Now, good St. Agnes, play thy part,
And send to me my own sweetheart,
And shew me such a happy bliss,
This night of him to have a kiss.

And then be sure to fall asleep as soon as thou canst, and

before thou awakest out of thy first sleep thou shalt see him come and stand before thee, and thou shalt perceive by his habit what tradesman he is; but be sure thou declarest not thy dream to anybody in ten days, and by that time thou mayst come to see thy dream come to pass.'

Mr. Hone has preserved a curious charm for the ague, which is said to be only efficacious on St. Agnes's Eve. It is to be said up the chimney by the eldest female in the family: "Tremble and go!

First day shiver and burn
Tremble and quake!

Second day shiver and learn;
Tremble and die!

Third day never return."]

ST. VINCENT'S DAY.

JANUARY 22.

MR. DOUCE's manuscript notes say, "Vincenti festo si Sol radiet memor esto;" thus Englished by Abraham Fleming: "Remember on St. Vincent's Day,

If that the sun his beams display."

Scott's Discov. of Witchcraft, b. xi. c. 15.

[Dr. Foster is at a loss to account for the origin of the command; but he thinks it may have been derived from a notion that the sun would not shine unominously on the day on which the saint was burnt.]

ST. PAUL'S DAY.

JANUARY 25.

I Do not find that any one has even hazarded a conjecture why prognostications of the weather, &c., for the whole year, are to be drawn from the appearance of this day.'

Lloyd, in his Diall of Daies, observes on St. Paul's, that "of this day the husbandmen prognosticate the whole year: if it be a fair day, it will be a pleasant year; if it be windy, there will be wars; if it be cloudy, it doth foreshow the plague that year." In the ancient calendar quoted below,2 I find an observation on the thirteenth of December, "That on this day prognostications of the months were drawn for the whole year. "Prognostica mensium per totum annum."

In the Shepherd's Almanack for 1676, among the observations on the month of January we find the following: "Some say that, if on the 12th of January the sun shines, it foreshows much wind. Others predict by St. Paul's Day; saying, if the sun shine, it betokens a good year; if it rain or snow, indifferent; if misty, it predicts great dearth; if it thunder, great winds and death of people that year.'

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Hospinian, also, tells us that it is a critical day with the vulgar, indicating, if it be clear, abundance of fruits; if windy, foretelling wars; if cloudy, the pestilence; if rainy or snowy, it prognosticates dearness and scarcity: according to the old Latin verses, thus translated in Bourne's Antiquities of the Common People :

In an ancient calendar of the Church of Rome, which will frequently be quoted in the course of this work, it is called Dies Egyptiacus.

[This curious calen daralso contains the following very singular notice for the 24th of January, the vigil of St. Paul's Day, Viri cum uxoribus non cubant.]

3 Thomas Lodge, in his most rare work, entitled Wit's Miserie, and the World's Madnesse, discovering the Devils Incarnat of this Age,' 4to. Lond. 1596, glances in the following quaint manner at the superstitions of this and St. Peter's Day, p. 12, " And by S. Peter and S. Paule the fool rideth him."