Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/292

 264 Some Characteristics of Irish Folklore.

tell me they remember seeing couples jump hand in hand over, or through, the bone^vQS ^^ at the cross roads on the top of a hill near Timoleague. In Co. Clare I have also heard of this jumping through the fires, and there the materials for the bonfires are collected for six months beforehand. At one time the bonfires were not relegated to country districts, but actually lit in the streets of the towns ; for we find, in Warburton's History of Dublin}'^ that the Lord Mayor had to forbid the practice because of the danger from fire, and as a substitute candles were stuck in bushes in the streets.

The importance of the Eve as compared with the Day, noticeable at Midsummer, is even more marked at Hallow- tide. Hallow Eve is observed everywhere, though I was told in Co. Tyrone that there is " less silly mischief and monkey-tricks nowadays. Gardens are no longer trampled down, or gates taken off their hinges " — contingent on cutting cabbages, Ulster girls being as ready in the old days to go out at midnight and cut a cabbage, as their sisters in Munster were more recently to celebrate "Snap- apple Night" by filling their mouths with oats and going out to the door or gate to hear the name of their future husband called ; or to melt lead and pour it through the wards of the hall-door key into a basin of cold water, to discover their fortunes. But divinations (it is to be noted they are usually done in the Devil's name) though they attract public interest — and hence the pen of the ready, and often only too superficial, writer — are by no means the serious business of this season. November is the month of mourning. It is above all things, by both Pagan and Christian ruling, the time of the dead. They may leave their graves and dance on Hallow E'en. They revisit the

21 O'Hanlon gives an actual instance of bones being burnt at Ballymaddock {Hist. Qiieeti's County, i. 277), and Latocnaye in 1797 mentions fires of bones on "certain" holidays in his Fromeuadd en Irelande.

22 Vol. ii. p. 1 175.