Love charms of St Agnes

John Keats, in his poem, 'The Eve of St Agnes' (1819), referred to certain love prognostications, but these are not for the eve (January 20), rather for tonight, the night of St Agnes. English antiquary John Aubrey wrote in his Miscellanies of 1696 that on the night of St Agnes you take a row of pins, and pull out every one, one after another. While saying a paternoster ('Our Father', or 'The Lord's Prayer'), stick one of these pins in your sleeve, and you will dream of the person you will marry.

But kids, don't try this at home if you're already married.

Otherwise, "passing into a different country from that of her ordinary residence, and taking her right-leg stocking, she [the maiden looking for a lover - PW] might knit the left garter around it, repeating the rhyme:

"I knit this knot, this knot I knit,
To know the thing I know not yet,
That I may see
The man that shall my husband be,
Not in his best or worst array,
But what he weareth every day;
That I tomorrow may him ken
From among all other men."

Categories: saint, calendar-customs, folklore, uk