TO-DAY'S DINNER.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 831, 1 June 1910, Page 3

TO-DAY'S DINNER.

(Specially written for The Dominion.) WEDNESDAY. Vegetable Soup. Shepherd's Pie. Charlotte. Boiled Custard. Jam Tarts. SHEPHERD'S PIE. One pound cold. mutton, one onion, Bib. cold mashed potatoes, pepper iin<; Bait to season, ono tablespoon dripping, tomatoes or mushrooms, one tablespoon floor, one egg, water or stock. Cut up meat, 6lioe and scald onion, melt dripping and fry onion till soft, add meat, season and dredge with flour. Stir well, add stock to moisten, and pour into greased piedish. Fill up, season the mashed potatoes, add tablespoon melted butter and warm milk, also part of egg. Mix well, cover the meat thickly with potaitoes, ornament top with a fork, brush over with remainder of egg, and brown in oven half an haur. FOE TO-MORROW.. ' j>ysters, rolled rib of beef, potatoes, eaDDages, chocolate, apples. UNLUCKY MAY. Now May is over we shall probably hear of many marriages taking placethere were few in May—for there is no doubt that the old superstition which regards May as an unlucky, month for marriages still .influences many a New Zealand girl in fixing the date of her wedding, and marriages are hastened in April, or postponed till June, so that the 'unlucky month may bo avoided. And yet, looking back to the origin of the superstition, one finds, as ono usually does find.in these researches, that there is nothing in it. According' to Ovid's calendar May, or Maius, derived its name from tho word Maiores, or ancestors. Romulus or Remus it is said came back in vision from the grave to decree that the citizens of Rome should hold solemn festivals in honour of their ancestors. May was the month they fixed on, and naturally no woman would choose such a gloomy season for her wedding. Ovid has a little vorse oil the subject, concluding with the line, "Bad prove the wives that are married In May." This line was fixed ,on the pates of Holyrood by some furiously ungallant Scot on the morning of May 10, 1567, the day after beautiful Mary, Queen of Scots, had married BothwelL- It does Beem a pit)- that Ovid had no remarks on the subject of the bad husbands who marry in May. It would have fitted, the, case even better, though, of course, no man would have thought of that.

Deriving their belief probably from the Eoman invaders, the English of early days had various proverbs about Hay, marriages: "The girls are all naught that wed in May," and "Who marries between the.sickle and the scythe will never 'thrive" were two of their familiar say- : ings, while an old poet declares that, "May never was the month of love."

In France, both May and August' are considered unlucky months, and it was believed that a woman marrying in those months would put her husband under the yoke, though after all if that were the proper place for him it would be lucky for the household when he went.

This superstition, like most others, survives only in a maimed condition, and exists now on purely hearsay and' unargned evidence. To take it' in its entirety would prove most inconvenient. Few, indeed, of the brides who refuse to be married in Hay would go the step further that the superstition demands, and devote {he unlucky month to the recollection and the celebration of their ancestors' manifold virtues.