This passage comes from pages 501 to 511 of Curiosities of Popular Customs and of Rites, Ceremonies, Observances, and Miscellaneous Antiquities by William S. Walsh (1925).
Halloween or All Hallow Even (also known locally as Nutcrack Night and Snapapple Night). The name given to the night of October 31, as the eve or vigil of All Saints' or All Hallows Day (November 1). Of all nights in the year this is the one upon which supernatural influences most prevail. The spirits of the dead wander abroad, together with witches, devils, and mischief-making elves, and in some cases the spirits of living persons have the temporary power to leave their bodies and join the ghostly crew. Children born on this day preserve through their youth the power to converse with these airy visitants. But often the latter reveal themselves to ordinary folk, to advise or warn them. Hence it is the night of all nights for divination. Impartially weighed against the others, it is the very best time of the whole year for discovering just what sort of husband or wife one is to be blessed withal.
Halloween is a curious recrudescence of classic mythology, Druidic beliefs, and Christian superstitions. On November 1 the Romans had a feast to Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, and it was then that the stores laid up in the summer for use in the winter were opened. Hence the appropriateness of the use of nuts and apples at this time. November 1 or thereabouts was also the great autumn festival to the sun which the Druids celebrated in thanksgiving for their harvest. Now, the Druids believed in transmigration, and taught that on the eve of this festival Saman, the Lord of Death, called together the wicked souls that within the last twelve months had been condemned to occupy the bodies of animals. But Saman might be propitiated through the priests by means of gifts and incantations to mitigate his sentences.
November was also one of the quaternary periods when the Druids lighted their bonfires in honor of Baal. The custom was kept up in many portions of Great Britain until a comparatively recent period. Wales was especially tenacious of it, and the observances which marked the November fire may be held to have descended directly from the Druids.
Each family used to make its own fire, and as it was dying out each member would throw a white stone into it, the stones being marked for future identification. Then all said their prayers and went to bed, and in the morning they tried to find all the stones again. If any stone was missing it betokened that the owner of it would die within a year. Some superstitions are pretty and picturesque and attractive; this was one of the many which were cruel as well as picturesque. It would take but a slight accident to cause a fright that might be actually dangerous to a superstitious person, and it would not be hard for an enemy of such a person to cause that fright by stealing his stone from the fire.
These fires in Wales were commonly followed by feasting on nuts, apples, and parsnips, and by the games of which something will be said presently. Sometimes nuts were thrown into the fires, in the belief that they indicated prosperity to those who threw them if they burned well and the reverse if they simply smoldered and turned black. There were fires also in Scotland, and there, in some parts of the country at least, the ashes were carefully raked into a circle and just within this the stones were placed, one for each person present. If in the morning any of these appeared to have been disturbed, it betokened death. Sometimes it was the custom to make large torches by binding combustible material to the tops of poles and to bear them blazing about the village, lighting new ones as often as the old were burned out. Fires were also used at different times and places on All Saints' Night, which is the eve of All Souls' Day, and on All Souls' Day itself, the 2nd of November. In these cases the fires were regarded as typical of immortality, and were thought to be efficacious, as an outward and visible sign at least, for lighting souls from purgatory.
But if anything were wanting to prove the Druidic origin of many of the Halloween observances it would be found in the fact that in some parts of Ireland October 31 was known as Oidhche Shamhna, or Vigil of Saman. Vallancey's "Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis" tells us that on this night the peasants in Ireland assemble with sticks and clubs, "going from house to house, collecting money, breadcake, butter, cheese, eggs, etc, for the feast, repeating verses in honor of the solemnity, demanding preparations for the festival in the name of St. Columb Kill, desiring them to lay aside the fatted calf and to bring forth the black sheep. The good women are employed in making the griddlecake and candles; these last are sent from house to house in the vicinity, and are lighted up on the (Saman) next day, before which they pray, or are supposed to pray, for the departed soul of the donor. Every house abounds in the best viands they can afford: apples and nuts are devoured in abundance; the nut shells are burnt, and from the ashes many strange things are foretold; cabbages are torn up by the root; hemp seed is sown by the maidens, and they believe that if they look back they will see the apparition of the man intended for their future spouse; they hang a smock before the fire, on the close of the feast, and sit up all night, concealed in a corner of the room, convinced that his apparition will come down the chimney and turn the smock; they throw a ball of yarn out of the window, and wind it on the reel within, convinced that if they repeat the Pater Noster back wards, and look at the ball of yarn without, they will then also see his sith or apparition; they dip for apples in a tub of water, and endeavor to bring one up in the mouth; they suspend a cord with a cross stick, with apples at one point, and candles lighted at the other, and endeavor to catch the apple, while it is in a circular motion, in the mouth." Vallancey sagely concludes that these superstitious practices, the remains of Druidism, will never be eradicated while the name of Saman is permitted to remain.
In the island of Lewis the name Shamhna, or Saman, seems to have been corrupted to Shony. Martin talks with considerable disgust of "an ancient custom here to sacrifice to a sea god, called Shony, at Hallowtide." The inhabitants, it seems, used to gather to the church of St. Mulvay, at night, each family bringing provisions, and also furnishing a peck of malt, which was brewed into ale. One who was chosen for the purpose waded into the sea up to his middle and poured out a cup of ale, calling on Shony to favor the people through the coming year. "At his return to land they all went to church, where there was a candle burning upon the altar: and then standing silent for a little time, one of them gave a signal, at which the candle was put out, and immediately all of them went to the fields, where they fell a-drinking their ale, and spent the remainder of the night in dancing and singing." He adds, "The ministers in Lewis told me they spent several years before they could persuade the vulgar natives to abandon this ridiculous piece of superstition."
If in the word Saman the Irish preserve a distinct evidence of Druidism, on the other hand in the drink called "Lambs-wool they equally confess the Roman intermixture. Lambs-wool is made by bruising roasted apples and mixing them with ale or sometimes with milk. The Gentleman's Magazine for May, 1784, says "this is a constant ingredient at a merrymaking on Holy Eve." Now, Vallancey makes a shrewd etymological guess when he says, "The first day of November was dedicated to the angel presiding over fruits, seeds, etc., and was therefore named La Mas Ubhal, — that is, the day of the apple fruit, — and being pronounced Lamasool, the English have corrupted the name to Lambs-wool." The "angel presiding over fruits, seeds, etc.," was obviously a reminiscence of Pomona.
It may be interesting to record a few of the Halloween customs which are now practically extinct.
A curious little book called "The Festyvall" (1511) mentions a custom obsolete even at that time. "We rede," it says, "in olde tyme good people wolde on All halowen daye bake brade and dele it for all crysten soules." Yet bread or cake in one form or other was locally associated with Halloween until a far more recent period. Indeed, even at the present moment it is said that the women of Ripon, Yorkshire, on this night make a cake for every one in the family, so that it is popularly known as Cake Night. In Warwickshire and elsewhere seed-cake was an accompaniment of Halloween, as indicating the end of wheat seedtime. This custom seems to have been general in the time of Thomas Tusser:
Wife, some time this weeke, if the wether hold cleere,
An end of wheat-sowing we make for this yeare.
Remember you, therefore, though I do it not,
The Seed-Cake, the Pasties, and Furmentie pot.
(Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, 1580.)
Aubrey says that in his time in Shropshire and elsewhere there was set upon the board at All Hallows Eve a high heap of Soul-cakes, about the bigness of twopenny cakes, lying one upon another, like the picture of the shew bread in the old Bibles. Every visitor was expected to take one. "There is an old rhyme or saying," he adds, — "A Soule-cake, a Soule-cake, have mercy on all Christen soules for a Soule-cake."
Tollet in a note in his Variorum Shakespeare to the "Two Gentlemen of Verona" (Act ii. Sc. 2) says, "It is worth remarking that on All Saints' Day the poor people in Staffordshire, and perhaps in other country places, go from parish to parish a-souling, as they call it, — i.e., begging and puling (or singing small, as Bailey's Dictionary explains puling) for Soul Cakes, or any good thing to make them merry. This custom is mentioned by Peck, and seems a remnant of Popish superstition to pray for departed souls, particularly those of friends."
Another Popish practice was summarily stopped by the Reformation. This was the custom of ringing bells at this season for all Christian souls.
In the draught of a letter which King Henry VIII. was to send to Cranmer "against superstitious practices" (Burnet: Hist Ref., 1683), "the Vigil and ringing of bells all the night long upon Allhallow Day at night" are directed to be abolished; and the said Vigil to have no watching or ringing. And in the appendix to Strype's "Annals of the Reformation" the following injunction, made early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, occurs: "That the superfluous ringing of bels, and the superstitious ringing of bells at Allhallowntide, and at Al Souls' Day, with the two nights next before and after, be prohibited."
In the Churchwardens' Accounts of the parish of Heybridge, near Maiden, in Essex, under a.d. 1517 are the following items:
"Imprimis, payed for frankyncense agense Hollowmasse, Ol. Os. Id.
"Item, payed to Andrew Elyott, of Maldon, for newe mendynge of the third bell knappell agenste Hallowmasse, 01.
"Item, payed to John Gidney, of Maldon, for a new bell rope agenste Hallowmasse, 01. Os. 8d."
Among articles to be inquired of within the archdeaconry of Yorke by the churchwardens and sworn men, between the years 1630 and 1640, one is, "Whether there be any within your parish or chappelry that use to ring bells superstitiously upon any abrogated holiday, or the eves thereof."
Everybody is familiar with Burns's famous poem "Halloween," which gives a panoramic insight into the customs of Old Scotia on this night of mirth and mystery. Perhaps no influence has done more than this to preserve and spread these observances among English-speaking folk. All of them are based on immemorial custom.
But what was once a ceremony of belief has now become a thing of sport, of welcome sport in a day of such serious thought and work and sense of responsibility that any excuse for sport should be laid hold of; so that now its observances are all a jest which young people play upon themselves, not in the least believing in the consequences, only half hoping there may be something in it, and saying to themselves that stranger things have happened.
So they practice matrimonial vaticinations of all sorts. Most common of all and most intimately associated with the season is the roasting of nuts. These are placed together on the bar of the grate side by side in pairs, and named for supposed lovers. If a nut burns quietly and brightly it indicates sincerity of affection. If it cracks and jumps it tells of unfaithfulness, while if the nuts burn together the youth and maid so indicated will be married.
These glowing nuts are emblems true
Of what in human life we view.
The ill-matched couple fret and fume,
And thus in strife themselves consume,
Or from each other wildly start,
And with a noise forever part.
But see the happy, happy pair,
Of genuine love and truth sincere:
With natural fondness while they burn,
Still to each other kindly turn,
And as the vital sparks decay.
Together gently sink away,
Till, life's fierce ordeal being past,
Their mingled ashes rest at fast.
(Charles Graydon: Poems, Dublin, 1801.)
Or perchance two hazel-nuts are thrown into the hot coals by a maiden. She secretly gives a lover's name to each. If one of the nuts bursts, then that lover is unfaithful; but if it burns with a steady glow until it becomes ashes, she knows that her lover's faith is true. Sometimes it happens, but not often, that both nuts will burn steadily, and then is the maiden's heart sore perplexed.
Burns's stanza on this subject is as pretty as any in his poem:
Jean slips in twa, wi' tentie e'e;
Wha 'twas she wadna tell;
But this is Jock and this is me,
She says in to hersel;
He bleez'd owre her, an' she owre him,
As they wad never mair part;
Till, fuff! he started up the lum,
An' Jean had e'en a sair heart
To see't that night.
Gay has also some pretty lines about a girl who proved her lover in this way:
Two hazel-nuts I threw into the flame,
And to each nut I gave a sweetheart's name;
This with the loudest bounce me sore amazed.
That in a flame of brightest color blazed;
As blazed the nut, so may thy passion grow,
For 'twas thy nut that did so brightly glow!
Next to nuts in importance come apples.
Endless are the methods of extracting from these fruit either fun or prophecy. What greater fun can there be when you are at the right age and in the right mood, than ducking for apples? These apples are set afloat in a tub of water. They must be caught with the teeth, and the hands must not be used at all. The surest way to get an apple, it is said, is to force it to the bottom of the tub, and there hold it close while it is caught by the teeth. Any other way is hard to manage and uncertain of result. Another trick is to suspend a stick by a string tied in the middle. An apple is placed at one end and a lighted candle at the other. The stick is then whirled around, and the purpose is to catch the apple with the teeth and not to catch the candle.
And as to prophecy, any maiden may find out at least the first letter of the name of her future husband by peeling a pippin, taking the paring by one end in her fingers, swinging it three times about her head, and then letting it drop. The pippin-paring thus dropped will surely fall in the shape of the initial of his name, as she will readily see, though the rest of the company, not having quite so discerning eyes as hers, may not.
It is said to help among the witches wonderfully to repeat these North of England lines while swinging the paring about the head:
I pare this pippin round and round again,
My sweetheart's name to flourish on the plain:
I fling the unbroken paring o'er my head,
My sweetheart's letter on the ground is read.
Two cut apple-seeds stuck on the lids of the eyes help one immmensely on Halloween in determining which of two lovers is the more desirable. All that is necessary is to name the apple seeds after the lovers, respectively, and that which drops from the eye first points to him whose love is not adhesive. The advantage of this spell is that a body may help the Fates along, if they seem undecided, by winking.
The hemp seed divination is known both to the United States and to Britain. The experimenter must go out alone and unperceived with a handful of hemp seed, which he must sow on the ground, dragging after him anything that may be convenient by way of a harrow. He must then say, "Hemp seed, I sow thee, hemp seed, I sow thee: and him or her that is to be my true love come after me and pou thee." If he then looks over his left shoulder, he ought to see a likeness of his future sweetheart pulling the seed which he has sowed. If he sees nobody, he may conclude that he is never to marry, or that there is some mistake in the experiment. A trial very like this may be made on Midsummer Eve.
If a girl would see her husband by an Irish method, here it is. Let her throw a ball of yarn out of the window, holding the end of the thread, and then rewind it, at the same time saying the Pater Noster backward. Watching the ball of yarn without, she will see the desired apparition. Burns shows that the Scottish form of this test was more solemn. He says nothing of the Pater Noster, but he says that the yarn must be blue, and that the experimenter must go out to a limekiln and throw the ball therein; then, when the rewinding is nearly finished, something will hold the thread. To the question, "Wha hauds?" the name of the future husband will be returned in answer. Of course it is understood that this or any of the other methods of divination of this night may be used with equal effect by a man or a woman.
Wet the sleeve of a shirt and hang it on a chair before the fire, as if to dry. Then go to bed, but do not go to sleep, only watch. At about midnight you may confidently expect to see your spouse that is to be enter the room and turn the drying garment. If you do not see him, it must be because you allow yourself to drop asleep, if only for a minute, and so miss him when he comes. Burns adds to the difficulty of this trial, and therefore to its probable success if carried out rightly, by requiring that the shirt shall be wet in a spring or rivulet running towards the south at a point where three lairds' lands meet. It is the left sleeve that must be wet. This, also, is a test which may be tried equally well at midsummer.
Numerous are the other ways in which the beatific vision of the future spouse may be conjured up. Lovers set three dishes on the floor, one empty, one with clean water, and one with foul water, and then approaching blindfolded dip their hands at random: they who dip in the empty one shall remain unmarried, and they who dip in the foul shall get one that is widowed, and they who dip in the clean shall be joined to a virgin. Or all alone they eat an apple before a mirror, feeling creepy as they look over the shoulder in the glass for the face of the sweetheart or spouse to be; or they go down the cellar stairs with a candle in one hand and a mirror in the other, for the same expected vision. Or they winnow in the dark three measures of nothing, simply with empty mimicry of winnowing, whereupon the face is to appear; or they pull the dead stalk from the garden, and judge by the earth clinging to the roots whether or not the lover has gold and gear; or they drop the yolk of an egg in water, and take heed of the indications concerning a lover's trade and tools, be they pen or be they spade.
But the mysterious rites of Halloween are not complete when the merrymaking is done and "goodnight" is said. Each young lady, in order to complete the charms of the night, on reaching her home must pluck two roses with long stems, naming one for herself and the other for her lover. She must then go directly to her sleeping room without speaking to any one, and, kneeling beside her bed, must twine together the stems of the two roses and repeat the following lines, gazing meanwhile intently upon the lover's rose:
Twine, twine, and intertwine,
Let my love be wholly mine.
If his heart be kind and true,
Deeper grow his rose's hue.
If her swain be faithful, the color of the rose will grow darker and more intense.
The moment has at last arrived for the final and, to many, the most convincing and satisfactory test as to the identity of the maid's lover if she is still in doubt. A glass of water, in which a small sliver of wood has been placed, must stand on a small table by her bedside. In the night she will dream of falling from a bridge into a river; but scarcely will she touch the water when her future husband, whose face she can plainly see, will jump in and rescue her.
A noteworthy circumstance in the Scottish observance of the night which has not been largely followed elsewhere is the extraordinary and varied use to which cabbage, or kail, is put in the traditions and merrymaking of the occasion. Kail brose, or cabbage broth, is inseparable from the Scotch Halloween feast. Mischievous boys push the pith from the stalk, fill the cavity with tow which they set on fire, and then through the keyholes of houses of folk who have given them offense blow darts of flame a yard in length. If on Halloween a farmer's or crofter's kail yard still contains ungathered cabbages, the boys and girls of the neighborhood descend upon it en masse, and the entire crop is harvested in five minutes time and thumped against the owner's doors, which rattle as though pounded by a thunderous tempest. In some shires at the "pulling of the kail" the youths of both sexes go into the kail yard blindfolded and in pairs, holding each other's hands. They each pull the first "runt" or stalk they find, not being permitted to make selection. All thus gathered are carried back to the house for inspection. The straightness or crookedness, leanness or fatness, and other peculiarities of the stalks are indicative of the general appearance of their future husbands or wives, while the taste of the pith, whether sweet, bitter, or vapid, forecasts their disposition and character. But the most singular of all beliefs in Scotland regarding the cabbage stalk is confined to the minds of very young children, though it is so peculiarly a tender delusion that the midwife holds it in respect to her dying day. The idea is universal among the little folks in the Land o' Cakes that where a new brother or sister appears in the household it has come, through fairy aid, from the roots of the cabbage stalk. So that when all the bairns of Scotland are singing, —
This is the nicht o' Halloween,
When a' the witchie micht be seen;
Some o' them black, some o' them green,
Some o' them like a turkey bean, —
however mad and merry all their games, they never lay their joy weary heads upon their pillows until with their own hands they have laid generous piles of "kail runts" against doorsill and windowledge, so that the gracious and kindly fairies of blessed Halloween night shall set free at least one baby soul from the roots and mould, and the household shall not fail of welcoming another tiny bairn within the coming year.
The following extract is taken from the Guardian (November 11, 1874): "Halloween was duly celebrated at Balmoral Castle. Preparations had been made days beforehand, and farmers and others for miles around were present. When darkness set in, the celebration began, and her majesty and the Princess Beatrice, each bearing a large torch, drove out in an open phaeton. A procession formed of the tenants and servants on the estates followed, all carrying huge torches lighted. They walked through the grounds and round the castle, and the scene as the procession moved onwards was very weird and striking. When it had arrived in front of the castle, an immense bonfire, composed of old boxes, packing cases, and other materials, stored up during the year for the occasion, was set fire to. When the flames were at their brightest, a figure dressed as a hobgoblin appeared on the scene, drawing a car surrounded by a number of fairies carrying long spears, the car containing the effigy of a witch. A circle having been formed by the torch bearers, the presiding elf tossed the figure of the witch into the fire, where it was speedily consumed. This cremation over, reels were begun, and were danced with great vigor to the stirring strains of Willie Ross, her majesty's piper."
A custom that prevails in Ireland and Scotland, and that is religiously followed in the United States by the people of those countries, has to do with the character of the evening meal. A dish, largely made up of mashed parsnips and potatoes and chopped onions, is served as the principal item on the bill of fare. It is called "call-cannon," though why it is thus designated only these people understand. A deep bowl filled to the brim with the food is placed in the middle of the table. Somewhere in the bowl is a gold ring, and in the center is a deep well filled with melted butter. Portions are distributed to each person, and the one who finds the ring is certain to be married within a year, unless already married, in which event good luck will follow the finder.
A loaf cake is often made and in it are placed a ring and a key. The former signifies marriage, the latter a journey, and the finder of either must accept the inevitable.
In the United States it is to be regretted that the spirit of rowdyism has in a measure superseded the kindly old customs. In towns and villages gangs of hoodlums throng the streets, ringing the doorbells or wrenching the handles from their sockets, and taking gates from off their hinges. In Washington the boys carry flour in a bag. Care is taken to have the web of the bags so worn that a slight blow will release a generous supply of the white powder. The bags are long and narrow, and are handled as if they were slung shots. These the boys use upon one another as well as upon non-belligerent passers-by.
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