A woman whom I knew in Ramsey, Mrs. C., practiced for her own benefit, and for others without payment, a method which is employed in England also. She melted lead in a pan over the kitchen fire and dropped it slowly into a basin of clear water. From the shapes taken by the cooling metal she made her predictions.
Her scrutiny of the contents of the basin may have served to evoke a glimmering of clairvoyance, for she hit the mark oftener than she was likely to do by intelligent guessing.
(source: A Second Manx Scrapbook, WW Gill (1932); photograph)