Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/67

 More Folklore fro7n the Hebrides. 55

is that at the end of my rope?" and the name given in answer was that of the future husband.^

If a girl went to a house and listened at the door, the first man whose name she heard would be her husband.

There is a mysterious method of divination which consists in carrying an apple on a fork against the Father^ the Son, and the Holy Ghost on Hallowe'en, the first person met to be considered one's fate. The custom was quoted with much expression of horror and explained as an importation, not a local practice, which, as forks and apples are alike modern innovations, is very probable.

A favourite dish on Hallowe'en is called Fuarag, and suggests the Yorkshire frumenty or furmenty. It is made of churned cream, oatmeal, and sugar. A ring is put into it — on the same principle as into a plum-pudding \v England.

A salt cake called Bonnach Salainn is eaten on Hallowe'en to induce dreams of the future in store. Not a word must be spoken after taking it, not even prayers if they don't happen to have been said previously, and no water must be drunk. The cake is made of common meal, with an inordinate quantity of salt. A variant on this is to eat a salt herring roasted on the fire. It must be consumed in three bites, bones, fins, and all, and the same conditions observed.

There is one custom observed on Hallowe'en of which unless it be the survival of some ceremony of blessing, one does not see the import. It was thus described. The boys of the house, urged by their parents, take a peat from the fire, and proceed round the house, the stackyard, and the barn, sunwise. In going round the stackyard one must enter, and place a stone on each stack on the inside of the heather rope going round the stack.

' There was a somewhat similar custom in the Lowlands, where the girls on flallowe'en used to put their garters outside the window, and pulling them in gently would ask in the same way, " Who is at the end of my garters ? "'