Vegetable love

My entry for this week's challenge

"If a girl wishes to know the name of her future husband, she steals a turnip from her neighbour's field (it must be stolen not given); she peels it in one continuous strip, not breaking the peel, then buries this peel in the garden; the turnip itself she hangs up behind the door; then she goes and sits beside the fire, and the first man who enters after that will bear the name of her future husband."

Pembrokeshire Folk-Lore 39 (1928)

From The Penguin Guide to Superstitions of Britain and Ireland by Steve Roud (2003)


To his Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity....