and nuts. Apples are a relic of the old Celtic fairy lore. They are thrown into a
tub of water, and you endeavour to catch one in your mouth as they bob round
and round in provoking fashion. When you have caught one, you peel it
carefully, and pass the long strip of peel thrice, sunwise, round your head; after
which you throw it over your shoulder, and it falls to the ground in the shape of
the initial letter of your true love’s name.
As for the nuts, they would naturally suggest themselves to the dwellers in
mighty woods, such as covered the land of old. Brand says it is a custom in
Iceland, when the maiden would know if her lover be faithful, to put three nuts
upon the bar of the grate, naming them after her lover and herself. If a nut crack
or jump, the lover will prove faithless; if it begin to blaze or burn, it’s a sign of
the fervour of his affection. If the nuts named after the girl and her swain burn
together, they will be married.
This lover’s divination is practised in Scotland, as everybody knows who has
read Burns’s poem of “Halloween:”—
“The auld guidwife’s weel hoordet nits
Are round and round divided,
An’ monie lads and lasses’ fates
Are there that night decided:
Some kindle, couthie, side by side,
An’ burn thegither trimly;
Some start awa wi’ saucy pride,
And jump out-owre the chimlie
Fu’ high that night.“Jean slips in twa wi’ tentie e’e;
Wha ’twas, she wadna tell;
But this is Jock, an’ 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.”In some places, on this mystic night, a stick is suspended horizontally from the
ceiling, with a candle at one end, and an apple at the other. While it is made to