Mar 7, 2025
BOTD_William Bottrell. A great preserver of Cornwall's rich and unique ancient heritage of myths, legends, and folk tales, was born today in 1816. Happy 209th, William.
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BOTD_William Bottrell. A great preserver of Cornwall's rich and unique ancient heritage of myths, legends, and folk tales, was born today in 1816. Happy 209th, William.
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Silent Divination using ivy and rushes, to foresee lovers
All must be conducted in silence. Best worked on the Twelfth Night.
A fire must be laid that will produce plenty of embers, and while it is burning down the participants must touch their head to the mantle stone before departing to gather rushes and ivy. When participants have returned, they touch their head to the mantle stone again before sitting down.Ā
Those who wish to divine their own luck in marriage and love, or couples who are sweethearts, place in the hot embers and ashes two pieces of rush (named or marked for the respective parties). This could also be done to matchmake within the group.
If both rushes burnt together well, they will be married.
As the pair of rushes are burnt, the angle and twisting of their burning defines the course of their love - united or parted.
The one rush that outlives the other rush will be reflected in which partner outlives the other.
When the rushes have been burnt and the couple have been decided upon as the potential married pair, an ivy leaf is thrown into the fire and the number of cracks and pops made during burning would count the years that would pass before they were wed.
Two ivy leaves are then buried within the hot ashes and the cracks and pops show how many children the couple would be blessed with.
Other portents can be drawn from the appearance and behaviour of the rushes and ivy leaves.
Adapted from 'The Smugglers of Penrose', recorded by Bottrell in the 1873 edition of Traditions And Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall
āāFor you must remember they are not of our religion,ā said she, in answer to his surprised look, ābut star-worshippers. They donāt always live together like Christians and turtle-doves; considering their long existence such constancy would be tiresome for them, anyhow the small tribe seem to think so. And the old withered ākiskeysā of men that one can almost see through, like puffs of smoke, are vainer than the young ones. May the Powers deliver them from their weakly frames! And indeed they often long for the time when they will be altogether dissolved in air, and so end their wearisome state of existence without an object or hope.ā
ā
On the Lifestyles of the Faerie Folk,
The House on Selena Moor, by William Bottrell
āThy face is a rough as Morvah Downs that was ploughed and never harved (harrowed) they say, but Iāll have thee for all that and fill up with putty all the pock-mark pits and seams; then point them over and make thee as pretty as a new wheelbarrowā
From an old Christmas play,Ā āDuffy and the Devilā, found inĀ Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, Second Series, by William Bottrell, 1873.