Northern mythology

DANISH TRADITIONS. 271
the beams under the roof, in order to form from it a judgement
as to the future. The usual mode is, to place one
plant for themselves and another for their sweetheart :
if
these grow together, it is a presage of a wedding. Or
they set the plants between the beams, that they may
know from them which of their relations shall have a long
life, and which a short one. If the plant grows up towards
the roof, it is a good sign ; but if downwards, it
betokens sickness and deaths
5. When lads and lasses wish to know who shall remove
from, and who shall stay in, the house, they cast a
shoe over their head towards the door. If it fall so that
the heel is turned towards the door, the party will remain ;
if the toe lies towards the door, they will remove.
6. If a person sees the cuckoo for the first time in the
year while he is yet fasting, it is said, "The cuckoo befools
us.^' If it is a male person, he shall not find any cattle
or anything else he may seek after. If it is a girl, she
must be on her guard against young men, lest she be befooled
by them. If it is old folks, they have good reason
to fear sickness.
7. If servants see the stork, for the first time in the
1
The heathen festival of the Summer Solstice, or Death of Baldur,
was. it seems, by the Christian missionaries made to coincide with the
anniversary of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist. Instead of Baldur's
brow (see vol. i. p. 22, note 2), the plant appropriated to the Christian
holyday was the hypericum (or androssemum), which in England also was
once " considered as powerful for the expulsion of witches, and for the
prognostication of the fates of young men and maidens.
In Lower Saxony
girls gather sprigs of it, and fasten them to the w^alls of their chamber.
If the sprig, the next morning, remains fresh, a suitor may be expected;
if it droops or withers, the maiden is destined to an early grave. Hyp.
perforatum was the species used in this country." Walker's Flora of
Oxfordshire, p. 217. Finn Magnusen, Den iEldre Edda,' * i. p. 17. The
name androsaemum (aj/opds- aTjua) is probably an alhision to the decollation
of the Baptist ; the plant containing a reddish fluid.