Valentine Charms Think of five or six names of boys or girls you might marry, As you twist the stem of an apple, recite the names until the stem comes off. You will marry the person whose name you were saying when the stem fell off. Pick a dandelion that has gone to seed. Take a deep breath and blow the seeds into the wind. Count the seeds that remain on the stem. That is the number of children you will have. If you cut an apple in half and count how many seeds are inside, you will also know how many children you will have. Englishwomen of the 1600's wrote men's names on scraps of paper, rolled each in a little piece of clay, and dropped them all into water. The first paper that rose to the surface supposedly had the name of a woman's true love. Also, in the 1700's, unmarried women pinned five bay leaves to their pillows on the eve of Valentine's Day. They pinned one leaf to the center of the pillow and one to each corner. If the charm worked, they saw their future husbands in their dreams. In Derbyshire, a county in central England, young women circled the church 12 times at midnight and repeated such verses as: I sow hempseed. Hempseed I sow. He that loves me best, Come after me now. Their true loves then supposedly appeared. How to say "I love you" in many languages!
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