peascod wooing

Gammerstang commented on the word peascod wooing

(noun) - (1) If a young woman, while she is shelling peas, meets with a pod of nine peas, the first young man who crosses the threshold afterwards is to be her husband. In Scotland it is, or was, a custom to rub with peastraw fodder made from pea stalks and leaves a girl to whom her lover has not been true. --W.C. Hazlitt's Faiths and Folklore of the British Isles, 1870 (2) I remember the wooing of a peascod instead of her. --William Shakespeare's As You Like It, 1600 (3) I have known thee these twenty-nine years, come peascod-time. --Shakespeare's 2 Henry IV, 1597

January 31, 2018