St. Agnes' Eve: fasting for a dream of love
St. Agnes' Day falls on January 21, and the night before it was the best-known dream night in English folklore. Young women who wanted to know whom they would marry kept "St. Agnes' fast." They ate nothing all day, went to bed hungry and hoped to see their future husband in a dream. John Keats built his poem "The Eve of St. Agnes" (1820) around this belief, but the custom is much older. An almanac from 1734 already joked about "pretty maids" who fast "their sweethearts in their dreams to see," in other words, who go hungry so they can see their sweethearts in a dream.
Ways to call the dream
A row of pins
The English antiquary John Aubrey wrote down this charm in 1696. On St. Agnes' night, a person would take a row of pins and pull them out one by one while saying the Lord's Prayer, sticking each pin in a sleeve. Then they would dream of the one they were going to marry. Unlike most of these charms, Aubrey's was for men and women alike: he wrote that the dreamer would see "him or her."
Hands under the head
Robert Chambers's "Book of Days" (1864) describes a girl lying on her back that night with her hands under her head. Her future husband was expected to appear in a dream and greet her with a kiss. The older charm book "Mother Bunch's Closet" (1685) gives similar rules: the girl was to eat nothing all day, let no one kiss her and then lie down with her hands under her head. The book also told her to keep the dream to herself for ten days.
A knot in the garter
If a girl spent St. Agnes' Eve away from home, in another district, she could tie her left garter around her right stocking and say: "I knit this knot, this knot I knit, to know the thing I know not yet." In plain words: I tie this knot to learn what I don't know yet. The rhyme went on to ask that she might see the man she would marry, just as he looked on an ordinary day.
The dumb cake of Durham and Yorkshire
In County Durham and Yorkshire, two friends spent the whole of St. Agnes' Eve without eating, drinking or speaking. At night they made a small "dumb cake" together, in complete silence. Each gave an equal share of flour, salt and water and did an equal part of the baking. They split the cake in two, carried their halves upstairs walking backwards, ate them and jumped into bed. If they had done everything right, each hoped to see her future husband in a dream.
A salted egg in Northumberland
In Northumberland, a group of girls spent the day fasting and in silence, then each boiled an egg. They took out the yolk, filled the hollow with salt and ate the egg. Then they walked backwards, saying: "Sweet St. Agnes, work thy fast, if ever I be to marry man, or man be to marry me, I hope him this night to see." In other words, they asked St. Agnes to make the fast work and, if they were ever to marry, to show them the man that very night. Young men there sometimes ate a salted herring instead, hoping to glimpse a future wife.
Looking straight up in North Carolina
The belief crossed the Atlantic too. In North Carolina, folklorists recorded this advice: on January 20, go to bed without supper and look neither left nor right but straight up, and you will dream of your sweetheart. The person who wrote it down added lines from Keats's poem, a sign of how the old custom and the famous poem traveled together.
What the dream was meant to show
Most of these charms aimed at one picture: the future husband or wife, just as they are. A rhyme from the north of England asks St. Agnes to send "my own sweetheart, not in his best nor worst array, but in the clothes he wears every day." In other words, people wanted to see the real person, not a dressed-up version. Collectors also noted the playful side: in Yorkshire, a fast broken by a kiss was said to spoil the whole charm.
Keats and St. Agnes' Eve
In Keats's poem, Madeline goes "supperless to bed" and lies on her back without looking behind her, just as old women had taught her. The poem made the night famous far beyond the villages where the charms were used. Many people know St. Agnes' Eve today only from Keats, but the customs behind it were real and widely known.
Today
Today, St. Agnes' Eve is a quiet date in the middle of winter. If you're curious, keep a notebook by the bed on January 20 and jot down what you dream. Whatever comes, the dream can show what's in your heart right now. That may be the most useful thing it has to tell you.
Related symbols
Sources
- W. Hone, "The Every-Day Book", 1826, January 20 (Hone Archive edition)
- J. Brand, "Observations on Popular Antiquities of Great Britain", ed. H. Ellis, vol. 1, London 1849
- R. Chambers (ed.), "The Book of Days", 1864, vol. 1, January 20 (online transcription)
- W. Henderson, "Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders", Folk-Lore Society, London 1879
- "Mother Bunch's Closet Newly Broke Open" (chapbook, 1685), ed. G. L. Gomme, 1885 (Project Gutenberg)
- "The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore", vol. 6, ed. W. D. Hand, Duke University Press 1961
Dream interpretations are for entertainment.