Again: if a damsel eat an apple in front of a looking-glass, she will shortly see
her future husband peeping over her shoulder. So Burns:
“Wee Jenny to her Grannie says,
‘Will ye go wi’ me, Grannie?
I’ll eat the apple at the glass
I gat frae uncle Johnie.’
She fuff’t[63] her pipe wi’ sic a lunt,
In wrath she was sae vap’rin’,
She notic’t na an aizle[64] brunt,
Her braw new worset apron,
Out thro’ that night.“‘Ye little skelpie limmer’s[65] face!
How daur you try sic sportin’,
As seek the foul thief ony place,
For him to spae your fortune:
Nae doubt but ye may get a sight!
Great cause ye hae to fear it;
For mony a ane has gotten a fright,
An’ liv’d an’ di’d deleeret,
On sic a night.’”A shirt-sleeve may be wetted, and hung before the fire to dry: then if he or she
lie in bed and watch it until midnight, he or she will behold his or her future
partner’s phantasm come in and turn it!
Children born on Halloween were formerly supposed to be gifted with certain
mysterious endowments, such as the power of perceiving and conversing with
the “dwellers on the threshold,” the inhabitants of the World Invisible.
Once upon a time, all over Scotland a bonfire was lighted on every farm; and
often the bonfire was surrounded by a circular trench, symbolical of the sun.
Every year these bonfires decrease in number; but within the recollection of
living men no fewer than thirty could be seen on the high hilltops between
Dunkeld and Abergeldy. And a strange weird sight it was, worthy of the pencil
of a Rembrandt,—the dusky figures of the lads and lasses dancing wildly around
them, to the hoarse music of their own voices! Miss Cumming writes that in the
neighbourhood of Crieff, the bale-fires, as the people call them, still blaze as
brightly as ever; and from personal observation we can assert that they are still