St Thomas's Eve

(20/21 December)

   A *love divination designated for this night, involving the use of an *onion, has varied little for 300 years. In Mother Bunch's Closet (1685: 7) the instructions are:

   Take a St Thomas onion, and peel it, and lay it in a clean handkerchief and lay it under your head . . . and as soon as you be laid down . . . say these words:

   Good St Thomas do me right And bring my love to me tonight That I may look him in the face And in my arms may him embrace.

   Then in thy first sleep thou shalt dream of him that shall be thy husband.

   A Victorian example from Derbyshire says the onion should be stuck with nine *pins, and has a slightly longer verse (Long Ago 2 (1874), 21). In modern Lincolnshire, the girl says:

   Good Saint Thomas see me right Let me see my love tonight In his clothes and his array That he wears most every day. (Sutton, 1997: 204)

   ■ Wright and Lones, 1940: iii. 198-9.