In England there was a fortune-telling custom before Christmas or on St Thomas's Day: girls took three, five or eight onions and pierced them with pins, marking each with a special sign or initial standing for the names of the young men they had their eye

In England there was a fortune-telling custom before Christmas or on St Thomas's Day: girls took three, five or eight onions and pierced them with pins, marking each with a special sign or initial standing for the names of the young men they had their eye on, to learn whom they would marry. The pinned onions were hidden in a larder or up a chimney, and the girls watched to see which would sprout first in spring: that was the man she was destined to wed. The onion's role as a medium in prophecy is certainly intriguing, but so is the sheer number of different divinations that women devised, in different times, for their marital fate. One utilitarian explanation of the need to know who one's intended is might be the quite elementary need to choose which of the men around her deserved more of her attention and, perhaps, might be permitted intimacy before marriage. If the onion has sprouted for him, all is in order, and she may yield