No. 170.--It is an interesting psychological fact that projects are in the great majority of cases tried by girls and young women rather than by boys and young men.
No. 174.--Here, as in many other cases, it is assumed that young men and women are accustomed to indulge in promiscuous kissing. The use of the word gentleman sufficiently indicates the level of society from which this project was obtained. Gentleman in this sense signifies any male human being over sixteen. It is often used more specifically to mean sweetheart, as "Mary and her gentleman were at the policemen's ball."
No. 184.--On Biblical divination see Brand's _Popular Antiquities_ (Bonn's ed.), iii. 337, 338.
No. 186.--This custom of divining the color of the hair of one's future wife or husband, which is probably very old, yet survives in many places, but with interesting modifications as to the bird which gives the signal to try the divination. In Westphalia it is at sight of the first swallow that the peasant looks to see if there be a hair under his foot. According to Gay, in England it is the cuckoo.
"When first the year I heard the cuckoo sing, And call with welcome note the budding spring, I straightway set a running with such haste Deborah that won the smock scarce ran so fast; Till spent for lack of breath, quite weary grown, Upon a rising bank I sat adown, There doffed my shoe; and by my troth I swear, Therein I spied this yellow frizzled hair, As like to Lubberkin's in curl and hue As if upon his comely pate it grew."
Nos. 187-193.--These practices, and others like No. 453 and the asseverations, Nos. 60-67, shade off insensibly into children's games, customs, and sayings. Games pure and simple have been omitted from the present monograph, since they are evidently out of place among superstitions. They have been admirably treated in Mr. Newell's _Games and Songs of American Children_. The customs and sayings for the most part belong in collections like Halliwell's _Nursery Rhymes_ rather than in the present collection.
No. 211.--Projects in which flowers and leaves are employed certainly much antedate the Christian era. Theocritus (Idyll III.) describes one in which a poppy petal is used, and he also refers to another form of love-divination by aid of the leaf of the plant Telephilon.