She wrapped him in her green mantle,
And sae her true love wan.”
Hallowe’en as it is popularly observed in Scotland nowadays, is a “merry meeting,” and nothing more; but in the times from which Burns drew his inimitable picture of it, it was a festival pregnant with superstitious significance and prophetic awe, and some of the olden time customs are worth recounting:—The first ceremony of Hallowe’en was, pulling each a stock or plant of kail. The parties went out hand in hand with eyes shut, and pulled the first they met with. Its being big or little, straight or crooked, was prophetic of the size and shape of the grand object of all their spells—the husband or wife. If any yird or earth stuck to the root, that meant tocher or fortune, and the taste of the custock—that is the heart of the stem—indicated the temper or disposition. The “runts” were placed over the doorway; and the christian names of the people whom chance brought into the house, were, according to priority of placing the “runts,” the names in question. When burning the nuts, they named the lad and lass to each particular nut, as they laid them in the fire, and, according as they burned quietly together, or started from beside one another, the course and issue of the courtship would be. Among various other charms to be practised were those:—To take a candle and go alone to the looking-glass, and eat an apple before it—combing your hair all the time—when the face of your conjugal companion would be seen in the glass as if peering over your shoulder. To steal out, unobserved, and sow a handful of hemp seed, harrowing it with anything you could conveniently draw after you—a grape or a rake or the like—repeating now and again—
“Hemp seed I saw thee, hemp seed I saw thee,
Whaever’s to be my true-love, come after me and maw thee,”
and, on looking over your shoulder, you would see the appearance of the person invoked, in the attitude of reaping hemp. To take the opportunity of going unnoticed to a bean-stack, and in fathoming it three times round with both arms, in the last fathom of the last round you would embrace the appearance of your future yoke-fellow. To go to a south-running spring or rivulet, where “three lairds’ lands meet,” and dip your left shirt-sleeve. Go to bed in sight of a fire, before which you had previously hung the wet sleeve to dry. Lie awake, and about midnight an apparition having the exact figure of the grand object in question, would come and turn the sleeve, as if to dry the other side of it. Take three dishes: put clean water into one, foul water into another; leave the third empty. Blindfold a person (say a male) and lead him to the hearth where the dishes are ranged. If he dips the left hand by chance into clean water, his future wife will come to the bar of matrimony a maid; if into the empty dish, he will have no marriage at all; if into the foul, he will marry a widow. This charm had to be repeated three times, and every time the arrangement of the dishes had to be altered.
There are other decayed and rapidly decaying forms of popular superstition—such as those relating to animals and places, the characteristics of the Brownies, and the various, vast, and extravagant ideas which have been entertained concerning the personality and behaviour of that much abused party known as “Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie”—but these must suffice here.
CHAPTER XIV
HUMOUR OF SCOTCH NATURALS
Humour, I have already asserted, is part and parcel of a Scotsman’s being, and is common to all classes of the Scottish people; and the remark receives point from the fact that even the daft folk in our land are touched with a rough-and-ready sense of it. Idiocy, unhappily, has obtained in all countries, and among all peoples, and “Naturals,” and persons of sadly inferior intellect, have not been uncommon in Scotland. Like many another familiar figure in recent Scottish life, the village or parish idiot, however, is no longer apparent in the native highways and byways. He has been legislated on, and from his listless and perilous wanderings hither and thither in the earth, has mercifully been placed within the confines of some private or charitable institution. When he roamed “at lairge” he was a striking individual, and claimed no little attention. The children laughed and ran at his heels, attracted thereto by the eccentricities of his speech and behaviour. Adult men and women, sound of head and heart, indulged his idiotic fancies, and treated him kindly for pity’s sake; while the thoughtless and cruel-minded among the robust order of the community too often teased his silly soul into a frenzy, and made him the butt of their cruel and wanton jokes. That he might be secure from the torment of the latter class is partly the reason why he has been deprived of his liberty. Every parish has its daft Jamie, daft Willie, or daft Davie, as the case might be; and being all touched, less or more, with a sense of humour, as we have said, and daring to give audible speech to unpleasant truths, which sane persons dared not more than think, many good stories are told of them. Not unfrequently they exhibited a degree of cunning and readiness of wit quite unlooked for in members of their class. Thus, whilst lounging listlessly along the roadside one day, a North country natural was accosted by a late Professor in one of our Universities.