Sure-Fire Ways to Find Love (Humor Required!)

This is a classic from the Almanac archives. Warning: Folk humor. (That means a sense of humor is required!)

Perhaps you never saw The Old Farmer’s Almanac as an authority on romance. Before newspaper advice columns and television talk shows, Americans looked to us for information, advice, and ideas to do with courtship, marriage, love, and, yes, even raising children.

That said, we’ll let you be the judge of these “sure-fire” techniques for finding, attracting, and wedding the person you’ll love forever—and ever.

1. Pluck a stalk of yarrow and stick it up your nose. If a drop of blood appears, your love is true.
2. Australian aborigines prepare a love potion from the testicles of kangaroos.
3. Kiss as many people as possible. Dr. Bubba Nicholson of Tampa, Florida, says that kissing is a way for us to taste semiochemicals on another’s skin. Semiochemicals transmit biological signals of compatability and attraction.
4. Think of the one you love while you swallow a four-leaf clover, and your love will be returned.
5. Upon hearing the first coo of a dove in the spring, take off your left stocking and look in the heel of it. You will find a hair the color of your true love’s hair.
6. Swallow the heart of a wild duck.
7. On New Year’s Eve, walk from one room to another while throwing a shoe over your shoulder, then look in a mirror and your mate’s face will be there.
8. Roast hummingbird hearts, grind them into a powder, and sprinkle it on your beloved.
9. Place a snail in a pan of cornmeal, and the tracks it makes will spell your true love’s initials.
10. Hide the dried tongue of a turtledove in a girl’s room; she will love you forever.
11. In 18th-century France, a man told a woman three times that she was beautiful. The first time she was required to thank him, the second time to believe him, and the third time to reward him.
12. If you touch your little finger and forefinger behind your two middle fingers, you can have any sweetheart you like.
13. Swallow a white dove’s heart, point downward, while resting your hand on the shoulder of one you love.
14. Hardboil an egg, cut it in half, discard the yolk, and fill the egg halves with salt. Sit on something you’ve never sat on before, eat the egg, and walk to bed backwards. You will dream of your future mate.
15. Plant marigolds where your lover steps to keep your true love.
16. Walk around the block with your mouth full of water; if you don’t swallow it, you will marry within the year.
17. Pull a hair from the head of a girl you like, and she will love you.
18. Pick an apple, prick it full of holes, carry it for a while under your left arm, then give it to your lover.
19. To keep your true love, eat potatoes, tomatoes, or hot spices.
20. If you count eight seeds in your apple, it denotes true love.
21. If you stub your toe, kiss your thumb and you’ll see your beau.
22. Peel an apple in an unbroken strip, swing it around your head three times, and throw it over your shoulder. It will form the initial of your own true love when it lands.
23. Cut your nails on nine Sundays in a row.
24. Stop looking. Many experts agree that searching for a perfect mate is doomed. Be flexible and commit to the unknown. But if you must look, then carry the heart of an owl with you at all times.

Can you see yourself doing any of this?  

Ready for some more folk remedies?  Now see sure-fire ways to cure a headache!