Page:Book Of Halloween(1919).djvu/70

50 on the Devil was locked out of hell. Until the Judgment Day he is condemned to walk the earth with a lantern to light his way.

The place of the old lord of the dead, the Tuatha god Saman, to whom vigil was kept and prayers said on November Eve for the good of departed souls, was taken in Christian times by St. Colomba or Columb Kill, the founder of a monastery in Iona in the fifth century. In the seventeenth century the Irish peasants went about begging money and goodies for a feast, and demanding in the name of Columb Kill that fatted calves and black sheep be prepared. In place of the Druid fires, candles were collected and lighted on Hallowe'en, and prayers for the souls of the givers said before them. The name of Saman is kept in the title "Oidhche Shamhna," "vigil of Saman," by which the night of October 31st was until recently called in Ireland.

There are no Hallowe'en bonfires in Ireland now, but charms and tests are tried. Apples and nuts, the treasure of Pomona, figure