The Book of Hallowe'en Part 10

"'Is it far he must travel to-night, This man of your heart?'

'Strange lands that I know not, and pitiless seas Have kept us apart, And he travels this night to his home Without guide, without chart.'

"'And has he companions to cheer him?'

'Aye, many,' she said.

'The candles are lighted, the hearthstones are swept, The fires glow red.

We shall welcome them out of the night-- Our home-coming dead.'"

LETTS: _Hallowe'en._

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WITCH OF THE WALNUT-TREE.]

CHAPTER X

IN WALES

In Wales the custom of fires persisted from the time of the Druid festival-days longer than in any other place. First sacrifices were burned in them; then instead of being burned to death, the creatures merely pa.s.sed through the fire; and with the rise of Christianity fire was thought to be a protection against the evil power of the same G.o.ds.

Pontypridd, in South Wales, was the Druid religious center of Wales. It is still marked by a stone circle and an altar on a hill.

In after years it was believed that the stones were people changed to that form by the power of a witch.

In North Wales the November Eve fire, which each family built in the most prominent place near the house, was called Coel Coeth.

Into the dying fire each member of the family threw a white stone marked so that he could recognize it again. Circling about the fire hand-in-hand they said their prayers and went to bed. In the morning each searched for his stone, and if he could not find it, he believed that he would die within the next twelve months. This is still credited. There is now the custom also of watching the fires till the last spark dies, and instantly rus.h.i.+ng down hill, "the devil (or the cutty black sow) take the hindmost." A Cardigans.h.i.+re proverb says:

"A cutty[1] black sow On every stile, Spinning and carding Every Allhallows' Eve."

[1] Short-tailed.

November Eve was called "Nos-Galan-Gaeof," the night of the winter Calends, that is, the night before the first day of winter. To the Welsh it was New Year's Eve.

Welsh fairy tradition resembles that in the near-by countries.

There is an old story of a man who lay down to sleep inside a fairy ring, a circle of greener gra.s.s where the fairies danced by night. The fairies carried him away and kept him seven years, and after he had been rescued from them he would neither eat nor speak.

In the sea was the Otherworld, a

"Green fairy island reposing In sunlight and beauty on ocean's calm breast."

PARRY: _Welsh Melodies._

This was the abode of the Druids, and hence of all supernatural beings, who were

"Something betwixt heaven and h.e.l.l, Something that neither stood nor fell."

SCOTT: _The Monastery._

As in other countries the fairies or pixies are to be met at crossroads, where happenings, such as funerals, may be witnessed weeks before they really occur.

At the Hallow Eve supper parsnips and cakes are eaten, and nuts and apples roasted. A "puzzling jug" holds the ale. In the rim are three holes that seem merely ornamental. They are connected with the bottom of the jug by pipes through the handle, and the unwitting toper is well drenched unless he is clever enough to see that he must stop up two of the holes, and drink through the third.

Spells are tried in Wales too with apples and nuts. There is ducking and snapping for apples. Nuts are thrown into the fire, denoting prosperity if they blaze brightly, misfortune if they pop, or smoulder and turn black.

"Old Pally threw on a nut. It flickered and then blazed up.

Maggee tossed one into the fire. It smouldered and gave no light."

MARKS: _All-Hallows Honeymoon._

Fate is revealed by the three luggies and the ball of yarn thrown out of the window: Scotch and Irish charms. The leek takes the place of the cabbage in Scotland. Since King Cadwallo decorated his soldiers with leeks for their valor in a battle by a leek-garden, they have been held in high esteem in Wales. A girl sticks a knife among leeks at Hallowe'en, and walks backward out of the garden.

She returns later to find that her future husband has picked up the knife and thrown it into the center of the leek-bed.

Taking two long-stemmed roses, a girl goes to her room in silence.

She twines the stems together, naming one for her sweetheart and the other for herself, and thinking this rhyme:

"Twine, twine, and intertwine.

Let his love be wholly mine.

If his heart be kind and true, Deeper grow his rose's hue."

She can see, by watching closely, her lover's rose grow darker.

The sacred ash figures in one charm. The party of young people seek an even-leaved sprig of ash. The first who finds one calls out "cyniver." If a boy calls out first, the first girl who finds another perfect shoot bears the name of the boy's future wife.

Dancing and singing to the music of the harp close the evening.

Instead of leaving stones in the fire to determine who are to die, people now go to church to see by the light of a candle held in the hand the spirits of those marked for death, or to hear the names called. The wind "blowing over the feet of the corpses" howls about the doors of those who will not be alive next Hallowe'en.

On the Eve of All Souls' Day, twenty-four hours after Hallowe'en, children in eastern Wales go from house to house singing for

"An apple or a pear, a plum or a cherry, Or any good thing to make us merry."

It is a time when charity is given freely to the poor. On this night and the next day, fires are burned, as in England, to light souls through Purgatory, and prayers are made for a good wheat harvest next year by the Welsh, who keep the forms of religion very devoutly.

CHAPTER XI

IN BRITTANY AND FRANCE

The Celts had been taught by their priests that the soul is immortal. When the body died the spirit pa.s.sed instantly into another existence in a country close at hand. We remember that the Otherworld of the British Isles, peopled by the banished Tuatha and all superhuman beings, was either in caves in the earth, as in Ireland, or in an island like the English Avalon. By giving a mortal one of their magic apples to eat, fairies could entice him whither they would, and at last away into their country.

In the Irish story of Nera (q. v.), the corpse of the criminal is the cause of Nera's being lured into the cave. So the dead have the same power as fairies, and live in the same place. On May Eve and November Eve the dead and the fairies hold their revels together and make excursions together. If a young person died, he was said to be called away by the fairies. The Tuatha may not have been a race of G.o.ds, but merely the early Celts, who grew to G.o.dlike proportions as the years raised a mound of lore and legends for their pedestal. So they might really be only the dead, and not of superhuman nature.

In the fourth century A. D., the men of England were hard pressed by the Picts and Scots from the northern border, and were helped in their need by the Teutons. When this tribe saw the fair country of the Britons they decided to hold it for themselves. After they had driven out the northern tribes, in the fifth century, when King Arthur was reigning in Cornwall, they drove out those whose cause they had fought. So the Britons were scattered to the mountains of Wales, to Cornwall, and across the Channel to Armorica, a part of France, which they named Brittany after their home-land. In lower Brittany, out of the zone of French influence, a language something like Welsh or old British is still spoken, and many of the Celtic beliefs were retained more untouched than in Britain, not clear of paganism till the seventeenth century. Here especially did Christianity have to adapt the old belief to her own ends.

Gaul, as we have seen from Caesar's account, had been one of the chief seats of Druidical belief. The religious center was Carnutes, now Chartrain. The rites of sacrifice survived in the same forms as in the British Isles. In the fields of Deux-Sevres fires were built of stubble, ferns, leaves, and thorns, and the people danced about them and burned nuts in them. On St. John's Day animals were burned in the fires to secure the cattle from disease. This was continued down into the seventeenth century.